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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27023905">Precious</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fledhyris/pseuds/Fledhyris'>Fledhyris</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Xanax Verse [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Humor, Apocalypseverse Michael Possessing Dean Winchester, Bondage, Broken Dean Winchester, Captivity, Erotic Horror, Fighter Dean Winchester, Gaslighting, Helpless Dean Winchester, Hurt No Comfort, Isolation, M/M, Mental Whump, Orgasm Denial, Possession, Resistance is Futile, Self-Doubt, Self-cest, Sexual Violence, Sounding, Swearing, Tentacles, a lot deeper than tentacle porn, canon divergence - season 14, dubcon sex, gathering trainwreck, grace rape, psychological conversion, snark as defence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 04:27:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>29,725</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27023905</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fledhyris/pseuds/Fledhyris</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Michael takes over Dean, after helping him to kill Lucifer, Dean discovers that he wants more than just his vessel. He wants him body, mind and soul, and keeps Dean captive in his own mind, chained up as his plaything to wear down his resolve. But keeping an archangel satisfied involves more than simple sex, and this might be the worst torment Dean has ever had to endure.</p><p>Set as the founding story for my AU series Xanax ‘Verse. There will be sequels!</p><p> </p><p>  <i>“You should not be ashamed,” he murmured. “You are beautiful. So perfect. Your body knows what your mind refuses to acknowledge, that you were made for me; that you are mine. The sooner you come to realise and accept this, the sooner you can be happy. I can make you happy, Dean. I want to.”</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Michael/Dean Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Xanax Verse [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1350829</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>63</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Supernatural Eldritch Bang</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>He was drowning. </p><p>Drowning, not in water, but in light. If light could have a physical feel to it, a pressure. It was like being at the bottom of a rushing vortex that held him pinned, in a vacuum at the eye of the storm, the deepest point of the whirlpool. Drowning in water (Dean imagined) would be dark. This was light, as bright as the sun in your eyes; if the sun turned the air liquid and alien to the lungs.</p><p>He struggled to breathe, clawing vainly at the too-bright emptiness roaring like a hurricane around him. Dark spots floated across his vision and he could hear a rhythmic pounding, steadily growing to surround him in a tidal wave of sound as though the raging winds of light had developed a pulse. A heartbeat. </p><p>He realised that it was his own.</p><p>The light dimmed, became red-tinged, stained with blood. His own blood. The roar of the wind became the rushing torrent of his veins; he could taste salt and iron on his tongue and in his throat, clogging and choking. Now the light was gone, leaving only a crimson afterglow, and the darkness pulsed like flesh, enveloping him in a living, suffocating coffin.</p><p>This is it, he thought, I’m going to die here, trapped inside my own body. They had called Hell a prison of flesh and blood and bone, but this was a closer confinement than any he’d been forced to endure down there. He choked, panicked, despaired; passed out.</p><p>Woke, prostrate, in a padded cell. A bare ten foot cube, with no obvious door, every surface a patchwork of plush white squares. Velvet, he realised, examining the floor beneath his nose. Who the hell lined a prison with velvet? And how was he able to see, without any observable light source? The whole room was bathed in a soft, shadowless glow - epic mood lighting, but he might appreciate it better if there was anything for it to enhance.</p><p>He struggled to his knees, his muscles dragging the way they do after a long time in water. Not so much tired as heavy. Examined his clothes; not a speck of blood. So… was he free? Free of Michael, that is; clearly he had only exchanged one prison for another, but if he was back in charge of his own body, he’d take prison over possession any day. </p><p>He got to his feet and explored the cell. Wasn’t terribly surprised when he couldn’t find any trace of an entrance. Maybe there was a hatch in the ceiling…</p><p>When far too much time seemed to have passed without him growing hungry, or thirsty, or needing to piss, he concluded that he wasn’t free in any sense of the word. Padded cell was a distinct upgrade from drowning, though. If he didn’t go insane from boredom. </p><p>That was another oddity, though. There was something a little off about the tiling. The squares were more like diamonds, tilted so that their corners were uppermost, rather than their sides. Not that he’d ever actually been inside a padded cell, so he had no frame of reference outside pop culture; although he doubted Michael did, either. He shrugged the puzzle off as irrelevant and, at least for now, unsolvable.</p><p>He wondered if Michael could hear him in here. Amused himself for a while with hurling invective and empty threats. Peppered them with regular commands along saltier (and simpler) lines of ‘Get out, you’re not welcome, your possessory status is hereby and forevermore revoked’. </p><p>Well it had worked for Sam, hadn’t it? He’d managed to evict Gadreel, admittedly with Crowley’s help. But Sam hadn’t known he was possessed at the time, which was why Crowley had to go in to tip him the wink. Dean was fully aware, so why didn’t it seem to matter that he was saying ‘no’ now? Maybe the dickwad really couldn’t hear him. Might be the whole point behind a padded cell; soundproofing. </p><p>More time passed, varied with exercise (punching the walls, mostly) and singing. He’d exhausted the best of Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Blue Oyster Cult and was making good inroads into Black Sabbath when a section of the wall opposite swung inwards, cutting him off mid-note. No mistaking the fashion disaster lounging in the doorway; even if he hadn’t still been wearing Dean’s face, eyes like a matched pair of welder’s torches were a pretty big giveaway.</p><p>“Well hi there, nice of you to finally show,” Dean greeted him, not entirely sarcastically. “Got tired of your own company at last?”</p><p>Michael strolled into the cell, the door closing soundlessly – and seamlessly – behind him. He stood there, just looking at Dean, a slight smile twisting one side of his mouth. Dean stared back, projecting every ounce of defiance he could muster. He was weaponless, trapped in his own mind, but maybe he’d get lucky and be able to take the guy. With enough distraction. Yeah, right.</p><p>The silent staring contest was starting to get unnerving.</p><p>“So, did you drop by to talk, or did you just feel like admiring yourself but got stuck someplace without a mirror?” he asked. That actually dialled the asshole’s smirk up a notch.</p><p>“Yes, I came to talk,” he said calmly. “You’re halfway right about the admiration, though.”</p><p>Dean blinked, confused.</p><p>“I do admire you,” Michael went on in that same emotionless drawl. “You were made for me, after all; my perfect vessel, my Sword. That’s not just a physical attribute, you know. Body, mind and soul; all in balance, in tune.”</p><p>He sauntered closer, hands in his pockets; Dean conquered an urge to back up against the wall, relaxed instead into a fighting stance. Not that he had any illusions over how that would go.</p><p>“Your body,” Michael continued, “is strong; battle trained. Hardened by years of physical duress. Tempered, one could say, like steel. Your mind; it has a clarity and focus most of your race lack. Oh, I know,” he waved a hand between them before shoving it back in his pocket, “you are beset with fear and doubt and self-loathing; but you know what you want, and you will do anything, sacrifice everything, to get it. I admire that dedication; that simplicity of purpose.”</p><p>“What do I want?” Dean asked; he wished he knew himself. “Apart from you getting the hell out of my meat-suit, of course. That’s my top priority right now.”</p><p>Michael smiled. “You want to save everybody. It’s a… worthy goal, if unachievable. And not entirely dissimilar to what I want.”</p><p>“You… want to save people?” Dean let his derision colour his voice.</p><p>“Of course not,” replied the archangel. “People are filthy, weak, selfish, incompetent; most of them don’t even know what they really want. They are lower than animals.”</p><p>He came another step closer, leaned forward slightly.</p><p>“I want to save the world,” he said quietly. <i>“From</i> people.”</p><p>“Hate to break it to you now,” said Dean, “but I’m pretty sure God made the world <i>for</i> people. I know, I know, it sucks when nobody wants to tidy up the toy box, but not much point having one at all, if there’s nobody to play; you getting my drift?”</p><p>Michael smiled again. It was utterly without humour or compassion, and Dean knew he could be cold, but he didn’t think he’d ever worn a smile like that, even in his darkest days under the Mark of Cain.</p><p>“Oh, I think we can teach those <i>who remain</i> to be tidy,” Michael answered with chilling emphasis.</p><p>“...We?” Dean was confused again. He laughed, injecting more confidence than he felt into the sound. “Nope, sorry to disillusion you a second time, but so not helping you there.”</p><p>“Mmm; we’ll see,” was all Michael had to say to that.</p><p>“Yeah?” Dean was stung to outrage. “You think I’ll ever throw my hand in with yours? What, you planning on torturing me? Well go ahead, give it your best shot. I’ve been with the best. I’d rather die than turn to your side, you psychotic dick.”</p><p>“There it is,” said Michael, softly. “That clarity, that fire. Misplaced, of course, but no less noble.”</p><p>“Yeah, look,” said Dean, suddenly feeling tired of this pointless conversation. “I appreciate the compliments, but if you’re hoping to recruit me through sweet talk then you really don’t know me. I already made one mistake, letting you in; I’m not making another. You can go to Hell. And while we’re on the subject, you can get out of my body first. You’re uninvited. Deal’s over, and you’re the one who screwed the pooch. Go on, out; leave; I’m saying NO!” His voice rose steadily until he was shouting, but Michael looked completely unruffled.</p><p>“It’s a little late for that now,” he said. “You handed over the keys to the castle the first time. Whining about it isn’t going to change my mind. And I can wait for you to change yours.” He stepped forwards again, right into Dean’s personal space, so that they were almost nose to nose. His eyes burned into Dean’s like freezing fire, as pitiless as stars.</p><p>“I already have your body,” he said, his voice deadly soft. “And your mind I can retrain, eventually, no matter how stubborn. What I want – what I’m here for – is your soul.”</p><p>Dean stared, shocked. “What… but you’re an archangel. What do you want with my soul? What are you gonna do with it?”</p><p>Michael raised his hands, slowly and without implicit threat; placed them on Dean’s shoulders. </p><p>“Do?” he asked. “I’m not going to ‘do’ anything with it. I just want it. It’s beautiful.”</p><p>Dean blinked and swallowed. What the hell..?</p><p>“Remember,” Michael went on, “perfect vessel. A triumvirate. Body – mind – and...” he breathed in deeply as though savouring Dean’s scent. “…soul. So very pure.”</p><p>Dean couldn’t help himself; he snorted with almost-laughter. “Yeah, not so much. Think you may have been mis-sold on that one. I dunno if anyone got around to telling you, or maybe you should know already from being in here,” he tapped his temple, “but I spent forty years in Hell. Ten of ‘em off the rack, swinging for the Dark Side, and kick-started this world’s Apocalypse into the bargain. Which I know you wanted, but it’s my soul we’re talking about, and far as I’m concerned, that’s my biggest sin. Not to mention all the – everything I’ve done topside, before and since. Only thing pure about my soul is what’s staining it.”</p><p>He stopped. Michael was shaking his head slowly, and his smile this time seemed slightly pitying, if that were possible. He shifted his hands slightly, turning them to finger the collar of Dean’s shirt.</p><p>“No,” he said, so quietly that if they hadn’t been eyeball to eyeball, Dean wouldn’t have heard. “I can assure you, you are very wrong about that. Your soul is...” he breathed again, half closing his eyes, “…flawless. And I will make you surrender it to me.”</p><p>Dean was starting to freak out a little; granted, he’d never thought this (or any) Michael was entirely rational, but now he was starting to sound like a grade A lunatic with the sleeveless white jacket and everything. Although there was a shred of comfort in the idea that he couldn’t just take Dean’s soul, the way he had his body. </p><p>A small war raged in Dean’s head, between the responses of ‘I’m going to surrender jack shit to you, no matter what you do to me’ and ‘But what do you want it <i>for?</i> To hang on the wall as a hunting trophy?’</p><p>“Dude, seriously. Why?” Curiosity – or bemusement – won the battle.</p><p>“Because,” Michael replied, “then I will own you utterly. I can possess your body and I can break your mind, but your soul – that has to be given willingly.”</p><p>“Right, well, never gonna happen, so you may as well fuck off now,” said Dean sharply. He’d had enough. Bastard already had what he needed, what was he doing, going for the collector’s set? He’d never heard of an angel getting all covetous over a soul; it was creepy. And having his own face shoved so close for so long was giving him the heebie-jeebies. It was like having an evil version of himself come right out of the mirror.</p><p>Michael tilted his head slightly to the side, considering. “Very well,” he said, straightening Dean’s shirt collar and patting the points into place. “You take some time to think things over.” He smiled again. “I won’t be far.” He stepped back, then turned casually and moved to the opposite wall. He pressed a spot at chest height, and the doorway appeared.</p><p>“Wait a second!” said Dean. Michael half turned, looking inquiringly over his shoulder.</p><p>“What’s with the padded cell?” Dean had to ask. “I mean, I get it, I think; prisoner in my own mind, locked up like a mental patient, ha ha very funny. But… why the hell <i>velvet?”</i></p><p>“Oh no, it wasn’t intended to be a cell,” said Michael. “My apologies for that misunderstanding. Although I suppose both would serve the purpose of keeping you safe.”</p><p>“So… what’s it meant to be?” asked Dean, staring.</p><p>“A jewellery box,” said Michael, with that cool, ineffable smile. And he walked out, the door sealing behind him as before.</p><p>
  
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>Dean stared at the spot where the door had been for a solid minute, or even longer. A freaking jewellery box? What the hell had he meant by that? The way he’d been going on about Dean’s soul, like it was some kind of grand prize; like a collector, a – a gem aficionado, or whatever, drooling over the finest diamond in the exhibit. So this – Dean looked around the cell, at the soft white diamond tiling, tried to imagine the inside of a jewel case and yes, he supposed it fit. This was Michael’s treasure chest, where he was keeping Dean’s soul locked away, snug and safe. </p><p>Son of a bitch..! Dean had met some freaky monsters in his time, wrestled with some truly whacked out agendas; and he had to admit, the prize went to Heaven’s inhabitants more often than not, but this..! This took the cake. Actually, it was almost funny. Hilarious, even. Just his luck, that the first being to really appreciate the quality of his soul also happened to be a stone cold, psychotic killer bent on world destruction.</p><p>Wait… stone cold. Michael was an archangel. And angels didn’t have souls. Although most of them (one especially he could think of) managed not to let that fuck them up quite so badly. Most of the time. Maybe it was because he was an archangel, Chuck really did seem to have screwed up his designs for those. But Gabriel hadn’t been half bad, once you got to know him. </p><p>Anyway, whatever. Michael was one of the most out-and-out villains they had ever met, and he had no soul. Putting two and two together, was it possible he was drawn to Dean’s soul because he wanted it for himself? As in, to make it a part of himself, to acquire something he lacked? Cas had never even hinted that being soulless was a problem; but he was one of the good guys, maybe you felt the lack more keenly if you were a giant douche.</p><p>Dean paced the cell (he refused to think of it as anything else) while he pondered, absently poking at the walls in passing, not really expecting anything to come of it. </p><p>His theory didn’t really make sense. Soul or no soul, Cas was more human than most humans Dean had met, and if ever an angel had needed a soul, Lucifer was the prime candidate; but as far as Dean knew, he’d never gone around jonesing for the things, either. Although he had kept Sam’s soul locked up tight in the Cage, so Cas couldn’t get it out… But that was just because he wanted something to torture, right? </p><p>Dean stopped in his tracks, wincing as the analogy hit home. Maybe this was just typical archangel MO, locking your enemies up in a box for eternal torment - probably got it from their father.</p><p>Unconsciously, he resumed his pacing. Okay, so maybe Michael was telling the truth, maybe it wasn’t about getting himself a soul graft. Maybe he really did just admire Dean’s soul like a shiny bauble he wanted to keep locked up in a vault safe, to come stare at and paw over like some avaricious old miser whenever he felt like a pick-me-up. </p><p>Dean shuddered, feeling faintly nauseous. The phrase ‘Don’t objectify me!’ hovered in the back of his mind, sounding hollow and somehow ominous. Well, no way he was going to just sit here, being all Boxed Edition Action Figure: Dean Winchester for the creepiest archangel left on his hit list. Time to start making a real effort to break out of here.</p><p>Except that an hour later (as far as he could tell; it was difficult to judge time in here, and he didn’t seem to have his watch or a phone, anything besides his clothes) he was still no nearer to finding the door. </p><p>“You are in my own freaking mind!” he growled aloud to the wall, smacking it with his open palm right where, he could have sworn, Michael had pressed it to go out. This time, he had made a concerted effort. He had tried pressing, and prodding, and poking, and punching, and all kinds of code words from ‘Open sesame!’ to ‘Abracadabra’ on every tile at chest level around the room, and then again with every other tile he could reach. No dice. He wasn’t going anywhere.</p><p>He went to sit in the middle of the floor with his knees drawn up so he could rest his chin on them and stare at the not-door some more. Things could be worse, he considered. An image popped into his mind, one of those musical jewellery boxes favoured by little girls, with a dancing fairy in the top that spun round when you opened it. (Sad that he knew so much about the contents of young girls’ bedrooms, from the amount of times they’d investigated monster abductions.) Except the dancing fairy in this box was him, and… ugh. He shoved that thought deep down with a grimace. He was not going to dance to Michael’s tune. Not ever. Not if he was stuck in here for a century. </p><p>Shit. That could actually happen… Sam, Cas, he prayed silently; wherever you are, please, hurry it up and end this Looney Tunes motherfucker so I can see you again this side of false teeth and a walker! </p><p>Another vision popped up, Sam with a beard grown wild and long like a crazy old hermit’s, streaked with grey and spittle as he ranted at Michael, shaking a walking stick in his face… Man, he was losing his shit already and he’d been in here barely over a day!</p><p>It made him sick to admit it, but maybe Michael was onto a winning tactic here. Dean could cope with physical torture, had years of experience of it, literally; but he could never stand being idle, just spinning his wheels with nowhere to go, nothing to do. Nothing to distract him from… what had Michael said? His own self-loathing. He’d be climbing the walls inside a week. Hey, that could be useful; he could cling to the ceiling, drop on Michael when he next stopped by… </p><p>Dean buried his head in his arms, squashed a rising bubble of hysterical laughter. Get a grip on yourself, he chided. Actually… there was something in what he’d just imagined. He got up, moved over to the wall where Michael had made the door appear and sat down with his back to it, just off-side. The next time it opened, he would be hidden from view. It was a long shot, but if he could just catch him off guard… maybe he could push Michael into the room and jump out, closing the door behind him. Would that even work? Had to be worth a try.</p><p>Having a plan, however flimsy, helped him keep a grip on his sanity. He still had to counteract the boredom of waiting, though. He hummed. Kept his limbs from cramping with stretches (how was it possible to get cramp inside his mind, anyway?) and practised jumping smoothly to his feet so he’d be ready. Went over all the lore he could recall on angels and their weaknesses. There wasn’t much, so he recited everything he had on every other kind of monster they had ever fought. Field stripped firearms in his mind. Summoned up the centrefold from his favourite issue of Busty Asian Beauties in pixel perfect precision. (It was an academic exercise. His circumstances didn’t really put him in the mood.) He even dozed a little.</p><p>Finally, as the uncountable hours were starting to feel like days, the door swung inward, right where he’d expected. He sprang upright, silent as a cat (the velvet was useful for something, after all!) and tensed, waiting for Michael to move past him. </p><p>There, yes, his shoulders and that ridiculous cap hove into view (and honestly, if Michael’s appreciation for souls was anything like his fashion sense then Dean should feel insulted) - one more step and he’d probably start looking around, he wasn’t stupid. It was now or never; and Dean angled his body just so and cannoned forward, with no intent to close quarters and fight, just to shove him out of the way…</p><p>… And Michael’s arm slammed into his chest like a tree branch, he didn’t even bother turning his head. Then a grab, a flip, a breathtaking impact, and Dean found himself pressed up against the far wall, his arms held above his head by a single hand and Michael’s other arm across his throat.</p><p>And the bastard was smiling, really smiling this time, a look of genuine pleasure crinkling the corners of his (Dean’s) eyes.</p><p>“Impressive,” he said, and God, he was practically purring. “That’s what I like about you; you just don’t give up, even when you know the situation is hopeless. I want your surrender, but I do hope you keep fighting. The struggle makes it so much… sweeter.”</p><p>Dean panted, forced himself to stay still. Michael’s grasp was like iron around both his wrists; he knew it would be useless to try to break free, and he wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.</p><p>“Least you don’t blame a guy for trying,” he gritted out.</p><p>“Not at all. I expected something of the sort.” Michael lifted his arm, letting Dean breathe properly. Reached out and… stroked his finger down one cheek, making him wince where he would have held up stoically against a blow.</p><p>“You’re a little mouse,” he murmured, “pretending to be a lion. So brave, and so futile. I could snuff you out like a candle.”</p><p>“Go on then,” Dean spat. “Do it. Oh, but you won’t get much enjoyment out of my oh-so-valuable soul then, will you? You aren’t going to kill me, so stop with the empty threats.”</p><p>Michael tsk’d at him, kept stroking his face, and Dean was getting severely rattled. Enemies, in his considerable experience, did not touch him like this, even when they were looking at him like an all you can eat buffet. Somehow, that soft, lingering touch was more personal, more intimate than a knife in his flesh.</p><p>“No, I’m not going to kill you,” Michael was saying; Dean was finding it hard to concentrate. “Just mentioning how easy it would be. Your life is so fragile, so… precious. I hold you in the palm of my hand, just so.” He cupped Dean’s jaw, stroked a thumb across his lips. </p><p>Dean froze, heart hammering, and a cold sweat broke out, prickling along his hairline. Jesus, the freak was completely insane, what was he even doing? Surely he couldn’t be coming onto him?</p><p>“Yeah, yeah,” he gasped, “I’m helpless, you’ve got me; let’s move on to the torture already. Mmm, pain, I can’t wait. Just think of all the horrible things you could do to this fragile little body.” </p><p>Another image flashed across his mind (and what was up with all the mental imagery in here? He wasn’t usually so visually graphic, must be something to do with the sensory deprivation) – himself as a mouse and Michael a snake, rearing and ready to strike.</p><p>Michael chuckled. “Oh, I’m not going to hurt you,” he breathed, and did he have to bring his face quite so close to Dean’s? “I’ll never hurt you, not in here; not while you’re mine.” That thumb was stroking the side of Dean’s jaw now, caressing his throat, and Dean couldn’t repress the shiver of revulsion that crawled over his skin like the slithering of reptilian scales.</p><p>“But I am thinking of all the things I’m going to do to you.”</p><p>Dean’s eyes snapped wide and he pressed back against the wall. Shitohshitohshit no, he couldn’t possibly mean…</p><p>The smile on Michael’s (his) face now was more demonic than any he’d seen on an actual demon. He leaned closer still, keeping his gaze locked on Dean’s until all he could see were the twin points of blue searing into his retinas, and he was so hypnotised that he actually jumped with surprise when he felt lips brushing against his own.</p><p>No, no freaking way! He wanted to scream denial but he didn’t dare open his mouth. Instead he kept his lips pressed into a taut line. This didn’t seem to bother Michael; a ghost of a laugh breezed over Dean’s mouth and then Michael was kissing him, little soft pecks along his jaw and cheek, and his hand was holding Dean’s head in place, gentle but implacable.</p><p>His mouth (Dean’s own, but that was the least fucked up part of this, and what did that say about the situation?) tracked across to Dean’s ear, where he nuzzled for a moment. Dean was holding himself so tense he was starting to tremble, and hoped the crazy bastard didn’t take it as a shiver of desire. It had to be a trick, right? A warm-up routine, all just part of the torture. There was no way Michael could seriously have the hots for his own vessel…</p><p>“I want you,” whispered into his ear, and Dean closed his eyes, feeling faint. “Want you to give yourself to me, in total surrender, and you will; oh, you will.” </p><p>Michael’s voice was an icy caress and Dean wanted so badly to say something sassy and careless and insulting, but he couldn’t find the words. This had never happened to him before, the monsters weren’t supposed to <i>do</i> this. Sure, some of the female ones had flirted with him, demons especially; Meg, Abaddon, and Lust, the self-styled Original Sin; but he could always tell they were insincere, that beneath the mocking surface charm lay a real desire to hurt, to rend and tear and lay bare his bloody insides. That, he could handle. He didn’t get a sense of that from Michael at all. His every instinct was screaming at him that Michael meant exactly what he was saying.</p><p>Michael let go of Dean’s head now, but he had only a moment to be thankful, because he dropped the hand to his chest instead and started unbuttoning Dean’s shirt.</p><p>“One day,” Michael breathed, interspersing his words with little licks and kisses to the inner shell of Dean’s ear, “you will say ‘yes’ to me again, and you will offer yourself willingly to be whatever I want of you, and I will make your pretty soul dance with just a glance in your direction...”</p><p>
  <i>So. Not. Happening!</i>
</p><p>“But until that day, you can resist me all you want, and it won’t make the slightest difference. I will take you anyway, there is nothing you can do about it; and I will enjoy your struggling as a cat enjoys playing with a mouse.”</p><p>“Go. To. Hell,” Dean managed to gasp, his voice hoarse.</p><p>Michael chuckled again, blew gently into Dean’s ear, then trailed kisses back to his mouth. He had his shirt open now and ran his hand up inside the t-shirt beneath, making Dean’s stomach contract painfully. </p><p>“You know,” he murmured against Dean’s lips, “I can make this good for you, if you’d just relax and accept it.” He stroked Dean’s chest, flicked a finger lightly against a nipple shrunk hard and over-sensitive with horror, wringing loose an involuntary gasp.</p><p>Dean screwed his eyes and mouth shut and waited for him to grow bored. Surely he had better things to do with his time than teasing a prisoner.</p><p>“Of course, it’s your call. You don’t have to relax. You don’t have to submit. Because you’re already mine, and I can do anything I want to you.” Michael’s tongue flicked wetly against the press of Dean’s mouth and he swallowed back a reflex gag. </p><p>Maybe so, Dean thought furiously, but I can make it damned difficult. Actually, maybe throwing up all over the snake might be a good idea. Or, he could kick him in the groin...</p><p>Dean’s abrupt movement was abortive, as Michael blocked his knee with his own, laughing softly. Then he pushed, easing Dean’s thighs apart, pressing up against him crotch to crotch. He resumed stroking his chest, and the thumb of the hand holding Dean’s arms started to stroke too, across the soft skin on the inside of his wrist. Dean was pinned, helpless except to struggle, and it was pretty obvious that was only going to turn Michael on further, so he made a monumental effort to hold still.</p><p>“Mmm, good boy,” Michael murmured against his lips. “That’s right, hold nice and still for me. Open yourself up; let me in.” He kissed Dean right on the mouth, probing with his tongue; Dean kept it resolutely shut. “Or don’t; it really makes no difference. No difference at all.”</p><p>Something else teased at Dean’s lips, something other than tongue. It felt… cold, yet warm at the same time, and almost insubstantial; fluid, like aerated water from one of those fancy environmental faucets. It rippled over Dean’s mouth like silk, back and forth, as though seeking something; nudging, probing for a weakness. </p><p>Dean pressed his lips together even harder, turning them inwards and biting down until he could taste blood. Felt like the guy had a freaking snake tongue and it wasn’t getting in, he’d have to hurt him to get his mouth open and he’d said he wasn’t going to do that…</p><p>A slick tendril slipped across his face, wriggled into his ear; plunged into his earhole like ectoplasm. At the exact same moment, another shot up his nose. He gasped, involuntarily parting his lips, and it felt like the tide washing into his mouth and pushing down his throat. </p><p>His eyes opened, panicked, and he saw Michael (himself) still standing there, pressed up against him, his (own) face only inches away, eyes burning like sapphires. He also saw the ribbons of… it must be his grace, he realised, horrified; pouring out of his mouth like a nest of snakes, a writhing knot of light that came surging over Dean’s face and invading every orifice. That was his last visual impression, as the tendrils reached his eyes and slid inside like tears in reverse, and his vision clouded with pulsating light.</p><p>He could feel them, like slimy tentacles burrowing through his body, squirming along every blood vessel, every nerve. They wrapped his brain, his organs, pulsing and squeezing in a gentle, fluttering rhythm. His blood felt carbonated, softly fizzing, every nerve end tingling. He felt… caressed, from the inside out, utterly invaded and thrown wide open to inspection, weightless and dizzy and rushing. It was skin-crawlingly horrible; yet at the same time, exhilarating. </p><p>Sensation throbbed through him, pleasure and nausea and the sharp tug of arousal, and his thoughts scattered. He felt like a vessel, in the literal sense; filled to overflowing with Michael’s grace, light leaking from every pore. </p><p>He had never felt so violated, not even by Alastair. It was a little like when he had felt he was drowning, earlier; except that instead of struggling to breathe, this was like taking one never ending breath. As though oxygen was surging through him in an endless, silent scream, dissolving him right to the core of his being; flaying bare his soul. </p><p>His soul which huddled, naked and shivering, wrapped in a glowing ball of living radiance, and he could <i>feel</i> how badly the light wanted him, how much the contact excited it. It thrummed and pulsed and yearned for him to yield, and he had never experienced such raw desire, focused so exclusively upon him. It was terrifying; it was orgasmic.</p><p>He lost all sense of self for a time; and when he came to, he was alone, slumped on his knees on the velvet floor of his cell. There was an unpleasant, damp feeling around his crotch and his dick felt limp and spent. He threw up suddenly into his lap. </p><p>He felt empty, desolate; used and abandoned like a discarded condom. He peeled off his shirt and used it to mop up the worst of the vomit, tossed it into a corner. Crawled into the opposite corner and lay down, curling his body into a ball. He hugged himself and prayed to go back to Hell, back to the clean fire of the knife and scourge, as tears squeezed themselves past his clenched eyelids and soaked the velvet beneath his cheek. </p><p>He didn’t even know if he’d held out, in the end; or if it even mattered. He was Michael’s possession, his plaything, and there was nothing he could do to resist him; he knew that now.</p><p>
  
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>By the time Michael came by again, Dean had calmed down somewhat. He’d slept which, surprisingly, had helped; and he’d buoyed himself up with a litany of imagined revenge, beginning with - but not limited to - all the ways in which he would inflict pain if he had the archangel on a rack down in Hell. </p><p>The smell helped, too, the dried vomit on his jeans standing testament to his continued denial. It also suggested one possible source of ammunition. He knew he couldn’t do much to protect himself (being sick would only afford a temporary reprieve, at best) but at least his mind was still his own – and his soul. Holding onto them would have to be his priority now; his body (and really, it wasn’t his body, it was a psychic projection of self or some metaphysical shit like that, because Michael had already claimed his flesh) would just have to take one for the team. And Michael could do what he liked, but unless he gagged him, he couldn’t stop Dean’s snark. As defences went, that wasn’t much either, but it was all he had left.</p><p>So when the door opened for the third time, if Michael had expected to see Dean snivelling in a corner, he must have been sadly disappointed. Dean was standing, back to the wall but defiant; and many a fanged nightmare would have quailed and turned tail at the murder glaring from his eyes.</p><p>Michael, of course, smiled as though genuinely pleased to see him so full of buck. Dean decided to seize the initiative and see where it took him.</p><p>“Sorry about the mess,” he dead-panned, gesturing down at his stained clothes. “Something you did must have disagreed with me. Violently. Hope that doesn’t count as ‘hurting’. Maybe you should reconsider your terms.”</p><p>Michael pursed his lips and walked into the centre of the room then stopped, looking Dean over thoughtfully.</p><p>“That’s an interesting reaction for a cognitive construct,” he said calmly. “Of course, since you aren’t eating, I shouldn’t think you have much left to draw on. I don’t think you need to worry about it happening again.”</p><p>Damn his shrink logic. Dean’s lip curled in a snarl.</p><p>“Any chance of a shower and change, at least?” he grated. “I don’t suppose you want your <i>Precious</i> rolling around in its own filth, do you, <i>Gollum?”</i> He swallowed around the insult with a sneer, giving it every bit of theatrical pronunciation he could, but (perhaps not surprisingly) the reference seemed to be wasted on the archangel.</p><p>“No, indeed,” he answered silkily, “but there’s no need for such elaboration, not here.” Michael snapped his fingers and Dean’s clothes disappeared. All of them. This time he did snarl, wordlessly like an animal, and threw his hands over his crotch.</p><p>“Oh, please.” Michael frowned slightly, gave a quick, impatient shake of his head. “Why bother hiding? I’m in your body, remember, I’ve seen everything before. And it’s not as though you have anything to be ashamed of.” A quick smile flickered at the corner of his mouth, and was gone again. “Quite the opposite, if your… performance earlier was any indication.” His gaze dropped to Dean’s midriff, swept in a leisurely way back up his body to his face.</p><p>Dean could feel his cheeks heating, took refuge in the only way he could. “Thought it was my soul you were after, not my body,” he said. “If you’re so keen on my performance, why don’t you just go take the real thing for a test drive? Step outside and enjoy a nice, long wank. Seems to me like you could do with one. Must be hard, in your real form, having no junk; suppose I shouldn’t be surprised how it affects you, finally getting into a real sack like mine.”</p><p>Michael beamed. “That’s my boy!” He stepped up to Dean and took hold of his wrists, pulled his hands away. Looked down and kept looking, though his expression remained oddly dispassionate. “You’re mine,” he said softly, “and I think I’ll keep you on display. Please don’t try to cover up, or I’ll have to tie your hands.”</p><p>He stood back, looking pleased with himself; Dean forced his hands flat against the wall by his sides, knowing Michael wasn’t joking. “If you like it so much, shoulda put a ring on it,” he growled. Wished he’d bitten his tongue a second later, when Michael cocked his head to one side, an arrested expression on his face.</p><p>“Now that is a very fair point,” he drawled, and snapped his fingers again.</p><p>Dean felt the sudden weight and restriction and looked down at himself, appalled. Michael had taken him quite literally, and a cock ring had appeared around the base of his shaft. It was a giant parody of a wedding ring, golden, and engraved with what looked suspiciously like Enochian symbols. Dean didn’t feel like asking what they said. </p><p>“You are one sick fuck, do you know that?” he spat, the hairs on the back of his neck rising in horror.</p><p>“Takes one to know one,” Michael riposted calmly. “You’ll have to keep me apprised of how efficiently that works; obviously I have no experience, and I don’t believe we should go by those videos you like so much. You can thank me later, if the claims turn out not to be exaggerated.”</p><p>Michael knew about his predilection for porn? Of course he did. He must know everything that Dean knew, by now. Something must have shown on his face, to judge by the amused, predatory little smirk that flashed out. Or else Michael could just tell automatically how Dean felt, which made sense, since he was in his body and emotions were a chemical thing, weren’t they? Which meant that not only was he abusing Dean, he could <i>feel</i> exactly how it affected him. Oh God, could this get any worse?</p><p>“Don’t think… you really need me to ‘keep you apprised’, do you?” Dean said, his voice strained. He didn’t want to know, but he had to.</p><p>“Well… no, not really.” Michael sauntered over and put his hand on Dean’s shoulder, kneading gently. Dean tried to repress the shudder that ran through him at the contact, the urge to shrink away; but Michael smiled and started to trace over his skin with a fingertip. </p><p>“You really don’t know very much about angels,” he said softly, drawing a line from Dean’s throat down over the pectoral muscle, circling his demon ward, moving on to brush almost casually over his nipple. It was the lightest of touches, but Dean felt as acutely aware of the finger as though it burned.</p><p>“But, to be fair, angels don’t know a great deal about humans, either,” he went on. He flattened his hand, palm to skin, stroking now over Dean’s stomach. Dean had to fight to stay still, not to tear himself away and run to the other side of the room. It wouldn’t do any good, and he didn’t want to show any weakness. Didn’t want Michael to chase him around the room, cornering him, trapping him like a helpless animal.</p><p>“This, for instance,” Michael said. “Yes, I can feel everything that you feel; it’s like a feedback loop, from your mind to your body.”</p><p><i>I knew it,</i> thought Dean, savagely. “Yeah, and you’re getting off on it aren’t you, you kinky son of a bitch,” he growled. “Look, just cut to the chase already. You know you want to hurt me, really; just imagine how much more sensation you could get, carving right into my flesh. You should do it. Be a whole new experience for you. I promise, you’ll like it even more. Come on, I’ll give you tips – I trained with the best Hell had to offer.” It wasn’t just bravado. He knew pain; it was a constant in his life. He had endured so much of it, for so long, down there; he would prefer it, infinitely, to this.</p><p>Michael’s hand had stilled as Dean spoke, resting lightly against his belly. Now he started up again, trailing fingers across his hip, down his thigh, up the crease between leg and groin; and the other side, around and around, circling his crotch, never quite touching the most private parts. Despite his revulsion, Dean’s cock twitched. There was just too much sensation, and it was hard-wired into him. He tried to ignore it, focused on his breathing, on keeping still.</p><p>“Oh, Dean.” Michael actually sounded compassionate; a little pained. “You don’t want me to hurt you, not really. You would hide behind the pain, feeling brave, and yes, it would probably help you to resist me for longer. But you wouldn’t enjoy it.”</p><p>“You think I’m enjoying this?” Dean yelled. “You sick bastard, you can do what you want to me, I can’t stop you, but don’t pretend you want me to like it. That’s just an insult to both our intelligence.”</p><p>“But I do want you to like it,” Michael murmured. “I want you, Dean, all of you, and this – sex – it’s such a big part of who you are. I want to understand it, to… appreciate it, the way you do.”</p><p>“Why the hell would you want to understand anything about human experience?” Dean gritted out. “You have what you need already; I thought angels didn’t – what makes you so different? Are you really just that fucked up and insane?”</p><p>Michael actually laughed. Then he slipped his hand between Dean’s legs, cupping his balls. Stroked his thumb around the edge of the ring, making his treacherous cock jump.</p><p>“It’s not me that’s different, Dean,” he said, leaning to speak softly into his ear. “When an angel possesses a host, it isn’t just a one-way process. Didn’t you know? Didn’t Castiel ever explain it to you?”</p><p>He moved his hand, massaging gently, exploring the shape and consistency of Dean’s most intimate flesh.</p><p>“When we take a vessel, we take on something of the host’s qualities, as well. That’s why it’s so important to get the right one; why you were bred, especially for me, to be the perfect match. It wouldn’t do for me to possess a coward, a weakling, a traitor. I need a warrior, Dean; someone with strength of purpose and unflinching commitment.”</p><p>Realisation was starting to dawn on Dean in a slow tide of horror. He listened, trying not to think; needing to know, but not wanting to understand.</p><p>Michael was stroking his cock now, fisting it with sure, even strokes, just the way he liked it, the way he did it to himself. Right down to the little twist on the upstroke and the way he would rub his thumb over the slit. It felt exactly the same; it was his own hand, after all. Michael was leaning against him, turned into his side as he poured the poisonous truth into Dean’s ear, so that the angle of his hand was just right. The perfect match.</p><p>“But you humans are complicated creatures,” Michael was saying. “There is so much more to you than that which we need. And we can’t pick and choose; we get it all. You see, I am possessing you, Dean; but in a way, you possess me, too. All your traits, all your flaws, all your mixed up, messy desires; they are mine now, and I want to understand them. So that I can control them. You are strong, Dean, so much stronger than you realise, and you… you overwhelm me. Me, an archangel, foremost under God!” He laughed softly, incredulously. “What you do to me, Dean...” his voice was a caress.</p><p>Dean felt cold to the pit of his stomach. What Michael was saying… This warped obsession with sex was all on him? If he didn’t spend so much of his life thinking about it, craving it, getting it any which way he could, whether with another person or just his own hand in front of a screen or a magazine… If he just had better control of his own desires, they wouldn’t be spilling over like this, affecting Michael; infecting him. </p><p>He was an angel, genderless, probably even sexless; of course none of this was down to him. It was all Dean, his own twisted, sinful nature, turning back on him now through an unsuspecting conduit. If he’d been better, purer, Michael would have left him alone; used his body, sure, but ignored him, the real Dean, the way other angels ignored their hosts. In effect, none of this was Michael’s fault; he was doing it to himself.</p><p>He realised that he was weeping, tears leaking out from under his screwed shut eyelids, and whispering over and over, “No; no; no.” Michael just kept on stroking him, and he was so hard now, he just wanted it to be over, needed the release. His skin crawled enough that he should be limp despite the manhandling, but the damn cock ring was keeping him engorged. </p><p>He thought about opening up to Michael, letting him in, letting him expose him and ravage him because he deserved it. He <i>was</i> weak, and what was the point of fighting any more? Maybe if he just let him have what he wanted, he would understand and be satisfied, and this could all stop. </p><p>He found himself thinking of those tendrils of grace, slithering up inside him. Not just through his mouth but into his ass, his dick, invading him like the tentacle hentai that was his most secret, shameful vice. He groaned, feeling his balls contract, but the ring clasping his cock pushed back, held him steady, wouldn’t let him come. He could beg…</p><p>No. No way was he going to beg for anything from this bastard. Dean could suffer through a case of blue balls if that was all it took to deny Michael his sick pleasure… Wait. Feedback loop, he had said. He really was getting off on this; must be. What Dean was feeling, in here, had to be translating to his body, which was Michael’s. Well then, he could suffer along with Dean, too, if he could somehow get him to stop before the inevitable happened. But how? </p><p>Submission… that was what he wanted. And only moments ago, he had almost been ready to do just that; had even begun to fantasise about it. It seemed counter-intuitive, to resist by giving him exactly what he wanted, but Dean bet he wouldn’t see it coming (or not coming, the pun sprang out unbidden) because as Michael had said, he was inexperienced. And he must be eager for it, far more interested in getting his rapey tentacles all over Dean’s soul than in what was happening to his cock.</p><p>Dean shuddered at the thought, made up his mind, and groaned.</p><p>“Please...” he whispered. He kept his eyes closed, but he felt Michael lean closer, his face coming cheek to cheek.</p><p>“Please, what?” Michael purred back to him, his breath ghosting over Dean’s lips. He made himself lick them, caught his lower lip between his teeth and nipped to make the flesh redden and swell.</p><p>“Want...” he was having difficulty forcing out the words, but that was okay, it made him sound needy, didn’t it? “Want you...” He stopped, panting, rolled his hips forward, pushing himself into Michael’s hand. “Inside...”</p><p>“You want me inside you?” Michael’s voice was deep, throaty; oh yeah, he was getting off on this, no question. Dean groaned again.</p><p>“Yeah… in me… your grace,” he stuttered between pants for breath which weren’t entirely manufactured. “Like before. Wanna… feel you… stroking inside...” His cock twitched, getting with the program with entirely too much enthusiasm, but Michael’s hand had slowed and Dean could feel the intensity of his regard; not down there but on his face, on his mouth. He licked his lips again. Stuck his tongue out just far enough that the tip flickered across the mirroring lips just a whisper from his own. “Please...” he said again, in a whimper of a sigh.</p><p>He felt Michael turn, press up against him. He didn’t relax his grip but his hand stilled entirely, just holding Dean, and then their lips were sliding together and Dean let his part, let out another little moan right into Michael’s mouth. He pushed his tongue forward… Felt something push back and opened wider, eagerly, swallowing almost obscenely as the slick, warm-cool flood erupted from Michael’s throat and into his own.</p><p>It was just like he remembered it from before, as violating and as mesmerising, filling him like liquid light until he felt his body, his skin must be swollen from it like a beached corpse. He was drowning again, not in his own blood but in Michael’s grace, which lapped hungrily at his soul’s defenses like the tide encroaching on a sandcastle, ready to swamp and undermine and devour him grain by grain. He couldn’t feel any part of his body, anything beyond the pulsing caress of light, and could only hope he’d made the right decision.</p><p>Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the light started to recede. It left him washed up like seaweed, twisting with nausea and desire. He ached, deep down, in his belly and cock and balls; it felt like a lead weight had been hung between his legs. But he couldn’t feel Michael’s fingers. </p><p>So it had worked. He had surrendered, but he had given up nothing; nothing Michael wouldn’t have taken anyway. But by hurrying along the process, he had held back at least one part of himself. Had kept control. That was what it was all about; control. Who determined what, and when, and how. With the help of Michael’s cock ring, which was the best irony.</p><p>As Michael drew back, Dean opened his eyes. Stared calmly into the ice chip gaze of his mirror self. <i>’Was it as good for you as it was for me?’</i> the absurd sarcasm popped into his head; he didn’t say it.</p><p>Michael smiled; a little thinly, Dean thought, though it could just have been wishful thinking. Then the archangel stood up straighter; his arms stretched out to either side of Dean, his hands flat against the wall, holding him captive still, but not touching him. The sapphire gaze flicked down and Michael snorted, softly, before looking back into Dean’s eyes.</p><p>“I… see,” he said, softly. “Very clever.” His smile widened. He shifted a hand down, tapped a nail against the golden band; Dean’s dick throbbed and he winced.</p><p>“This is working though, I think; yes?” he said, his smile turning predatory. “I’ll leave you to dwell on the… consequences of your little rebellion, then. Don’t get too comfortable.” He laughed softly as he turned and headed for the door.</p><p>Dean said nothing, just watched him leave. His chest felt too tight, his skin was on fire, and his crotch felt as though it had fielded a football. But he had won this round. Hadn’t he?</p><p>As time ticked along in its measured, but unmeasurable way, he became increasingly less sure. The ache in his groin wasn’t going away, and he was starting to feel a little dizzy. Still, Michael was gone, for now. Maybe if he took care of things himself, it wouldn’t be like giving in; and if there was any luck left on Dean’s side, the bastard would feel it, right at an inopportune moment. He hoped he’d come all over his tailored pants; that would serve him right for wanting to learn about the human experience.</p><p>Dean closed his right hand gingerly around his swollen, tender cock; let go as though stung, with a softly uttered expletive. It felt too familiar, too much like Michael still. He switched hands; clumsier, with the left, but all his. Fisting was too painful, so he just held himself, stroking his fingertips along his length; lowered his right hand to massage his balls. He leaned back against the wall, spreading his legs and closing his eyes. Tried to concentrate only on his own hands, emptying his mind of imagery. That’s it now, softly, the barest brush of skin all that was needed…</p><p>He felt, rather than heard, the door fly open with a rush of air, and Michael was on him, pinioning his arms, wrenching them above his head.</p><p>“No, no, no,” the angel remonstrated, strangely gentle. “Not like this, Dean.” He hooked a leg behind Dean’s knees and pulled, and Dean went down. He braced himself for the pain of dislocated shoulders as he dropped to the floor while Michael held his arms, but he didn’t fall far at all. He hit something wide and soft that cushioned and then supported his body; looked around him with surprise to realise that Michael had conjured up a bed. It had a white silk sheet and pillows but no covers, nothing for Dean to hide under (no surprise there). </p><p>Michael was kneeling astride his legs, bending over him as he pinned his arms against the wall; now he took one each of Dean’s wrists and splayed his arms out into a Y, pressed them firmly and let go, sitting back on his heels. Dean’s arms stayed put, and he could feel something shackling his wrists. He craned his head; manacles, golden and etched with runes just like the cock ring, securing him to the wall.</p><p>“There,” said Michael with a satisfied smirk. “I told you to think about consequences, didn’t I? I really enjoy your little defiances, Dean, but don’t mistake enjoyment for tolerance.”</p><p>Dean glared up at him, grinding his teeth and tugging ineffectually at the manacles.</p><p>Michael gave him a mock pout of sympathy. “Oh, I know; I’m leaving you high and dry, isn’t that the saying? It’s fine; you can have relief any time you like. All you have to do is ask. I won’t even make you beg. It just has to come through me, Dean, that’s the only rule.” He cocked his head, considering with a cold twinkle in his eye. “So would you like a helping hand, or shall I be getting back to my business?”</p><p>“Go to Hell,” Dean ground out. “You’re feeling it too, I know you are. How about you come ask me when you’ve had enough?”</p><p>Michael smiled, completely unperturbed. “Yes, I can feel it,” he said, quite cheerfully. “It’s an… interesting sensation, but hardly insurmountable. Actually, it helps me to remember that you’re in here, waiting, and… wanting. I like that. Yes, I think I like it… very much.”</p><p>He patted Dean’s cheek then swung himself off the bed, pausing to look down admiringly at his handiwork. Dean had already gotten used to being naked in front of the guy, but now he felt even more vulnerable, chained and staked out like a sacrificial offering. On a silken bed, for Christ’s sake; the imagery couldn’t get much more overblown, like a Harlequin dub-con ‘romance’ novel. Fifty Shades of Grey? More like Fifty Shades of Wrong. </p><p>He risked a sneak peek at Michael’s crotch, looking for a hard-on to match his own, but either the tailoring of his expensive suit hid the evidence or – more likely – it didn’t count in here, because Michael could appear to him however he wanted.</p><p>Michael chuckled and Dean tore his gaze away, feeling his cheeks heat again as he realised he’d been caught staring.</p><p>“That what you want, Dean?” the archangel purred. “You’ve never tried it before, but you’ve wondered, haven’t you.” It wasn’t a question. “Want to make your first time with an archangel? It’s ambitious, but I could be accommodating. If you ask nicely.” </p><p>He got one leg up to kneel on the bed, leaning over Dean, who shrank back into the pillows and clamped his own legs together as tightly as he could. Michael chuckled again and caressed Dean’s thigh.</p><p>Dean strained to keep still, the survival instinct of prey frozen before a predator. Michael was playing with him; he didn’t want to provoke him into being serious.</p><p>“Just imagine it,” he whispered, right into Dean’s ear. He trailed a fingernail up the length of Dean’s cock, which jumped at the contact. The light touch was almost unbearable, like a brand against his skin. “My cock,” Michael continued, his voice a silken whisper, “in your ass; my grace in your throat; stretching you open at both ends.” </p><p>Dean screwed his eyes tight, couldn’t help the soft whimper that escaped his clenching throat. His dick was on fucking fire, dammit. What the hell was wrong with him, how could this be turning him on so much?</p><p>Michael dragged his finger over the slit of Dean’s cock, trailed the gathering wetness back down his shaft and pressed against his balls as Dean shuddered.</p><p>“Stretching you with your own cock,” he murmured. “Now there’s a delightful concept. You’d basically be fucking yourself, wouldn’t you? You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Dean. It has just enough depraved novelty about it to press your jaded buttons.” He kissed the ear, licking wetly around the shell before darting his tongue deep into the earhole.</p><p><i>‘This is not happening, this is not happening, this is not happening,’</i> Dean repeated to himself silently over and over. It wasn’t helping. An idea popped into being, ludicrous but irresistible. It would piss Michael off, but that would be a good thing right now.</p><p>“You… You know what… would help?” he gritted out in a strangled whisper.</p><p>“Tell me,” Michael purred into his ear, his finger tracing patterns of fire around the cock ring.</p><p>“Take off… that… stupid cap. It’s a real… mood killer.” He burst out laughing at his own insanity, the sound thin and strained. Found he couldn’t stop; was alternately giggling and crying, hysterical as a god-damned girl.</p><p>Michael’s fingers stilled; he drew back slightly, regarding Dean, who was too wrapped up in his own meltdown to analyse whatever emotions might be showing on the angel’s enigmatic face.</p><p>Michael raised his hand <i>(thank God)</i> from Dean’s bursting cock, crooked a finger and gently wiped the tear-streaked skin directly below his eye.</p><p>“I think,” he said, quietly and so very gently it actually sounded like compassion, “I had better come back later. You should rest.” He cradled Dean’s face in his hand for a moment then stroked his hair before getting up off the bed. Dean’s sobs slowed to a gurgling hiccup.</p><p>“With… without the headgear?” he forced out, and was rewarded as Michael’s lips thinned.</p><p>“If it helps you to get into the mood, Dean, I’ll come to you any way you want,” he said. His voice was still quiet but now it had a dangerous edge. “But I’ll know if you’re being genuine, so don’t think you can trick me with these little games. You’re only stalling.” His voice softened. “Now get some sleep.”</p><p>He turned and left, and Dean didn’t feel half so relieved as he thought he ought to. He still ached for a sexual release that wasn’t coming, and how long would it be before Michael came back? He was starting to regret having needled him. A long spell of boredom and physical misery stretched before Dean and he felt he would almost, <i>almost</i> prefer dealing with the angel. If he could just keep his slippery tentacles to himself, Dean thought he could just about cope with the touching. </p><p>He laughed at himself, a sardonic bark that was swallowed up by the muffling velvet walls. Less than an hour gone, he had manipulated Michael, very deliberately, into using his grace, to stop him from making Dean come. Now here he was, wishing for the reverse of that situation. He was a mess; didn’t know what he wanted, whatever Michael thought about his strength of will. </p><p>How long had he even been here, boxed and now chained in his own mind? He couldn’t keep any kind of grasp on time. It could have been days, or weeks; even months, if Michael was keeping him under while he ‘slept’. The solitude was wearing him down faster than the physical torment. </p><p>He knew first-hand that solitary confinement did nasty things to a person’s psyche; it was why they used it, to tame even the most obstinate prisoners. When it had been used on him and Sam by the President’s secret security forces, they had made a desperate deal with Billie to win free. But even then, there had been cues to help demarcate the days: meal times, his body’s natural rhythms. He hadn’t been restrained, either, and could pace the cramped confines of his cell to relieve muscular tension and the tics of crushing boredom. He had even been able to scratch out a rough calendar on the wall with a loose screw. And it had helped a little, knowing that his brother was right there with him; somehow, even though he hadn’t been able to hear Sam, he had known he was close, just on the other side of the cinderblock wall. Not that he liked to think of Sammy trapped, but it had made him feel less lost and alone than he did right now.</p><p>He had to give it to Michael; his predicament was frighteningly effective. He hoped Sam was close to a solution. Hoped he was okay, that Michael hadn’t killed him already...</p><p>“C’mon, Sammy,” he whispered. “You can do it. Please. I need you, man. Not sure how much longer I can hold out here.”</p><p>If Michael had hurt his little brother, he sure as hell wasn’t going to give the bastard squat. Maybe he could use that as leverage, extract a promise from Michael <i>(yeah, like he kept his promises…),</i> trade his cooperation for Sam’s safety. Now that he knew how invested Michael was in his behaviour, it gave him currency. Yeah, awesome plan. Trading sexual favours to a deranged archangel for his brother’s life. </p><p>His hollow laughter turned to groans, then a long, wailing yell of despair as he suddenly tugged, viciously, at the manacles, bruising his wrists as he bucked and writhed uselessly. They held fast, as he’d known they would. He wasn’t even trying to get free, not really; just acting out against his imprisonment and emotional turmoil.</p><p>Eventually he settled, panting, his heart hammering. Wondered if his real heart was racing, too, and what Michael thought about it. Would he enjoy that as much as the permanent erection Dean seemed to be cursed with? </p><p>He tried twisting to the side to grind against the bed, but couldn’t turn far enough due to the restraints. He could lift his leg, rub himself against his own thigh, but… He could imagine Michael’s reaction, “Do you want me to shackle your legs too, Dean?” and the result: him splayed out on the bed, totally helpless, spread for Michael’s gratification. No, thank you. He’d rather suffer. He closed his eyes and concentrated on being still, calming his breathing and his heart rate, trying to ignore the pulsing ache between his legs.</p><p>It took a long time, but eventually it died down and went limp again, and Dean fell, exhausted, into sleep.</p><p>
  
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
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</p><p>He was woken, this time, not by Michael but by a searing pain in his arm, which wrenched him out of a nightmare. He had been dreaming of snakes crawling into his body, snakes with glowing blue eyes, and when they got in there they headed straight for his soul, which glowed like a beacon despite his frantic attempts to tell it to quieten down. He knew they were going to lay their eggs inside it, like a nest, and he had never welcomed pain as much as he did that moment for its timely interruption. </p><p>He craned his head around to stare at his arm, wondering if it had just been a muscle spasm; he was propped up against pillows, but even so, it wasn’t the most comfortable position for sleep, with his arms manacled to the wall at either side. </p><p>There was a mark on his upper arm, like a burn, red raw and still throbbing. It was a strange shape, like two long triangles pointing away from each other, left and right. He had no idea what it might mean, or who had put it there. </p><p>Michael was the obvious suspect, of course, except that he was pretty certain anything Michael wanted to do to him, he would do up close and in person. On the other hand, it did look a lot like a brand. Whatever it was, it helped to focus his mind on something cleaner, sharper than the constant crawling feelings of humiliation, shame and dull arousal that Michael engendered. Maybe he should use that, try biting himself; but no, he didn’t want to end up gagged.</p><p>The pain also kept him awake though, and time dragged interminably as he lay there, with nothing to do but wait for his tormentor to return. He tried twisting and jerking at his manacles, more to be doing something than with any real hope of pulling free, until his muscles ached from the strain and his wrists burned like the mysterious brand. He tried calling for Michael, his voice hoarse and scratchy to his ears. </p><p>He simultaneously chastised himself, incredulous (do you <i>want</i> him to come, are you that much of a masochist?) and was desperate, ready to put up with even Michael to escape the deadly monotony. At least he was someone to talk to, and you really are insane, he told himself; Michael doesn’t want to talk to you, he wants to play with your sloppy parts until you don’t know whether you’re begging him to stop or to do it even more. </p><p>A fresh wave of despair and self-hatred followed this revelation, crushing his ego like an avalanche. If Alastair were somehow to show up now, well, he wouldn’t precisely shake his hand, but he would greet the Hellspawned bastard with a fair degree of respect and almost grateful anticipation. Compared to the way Michael made him feel, he recalled his time in Hell with nostalgia.</p><p>By the time Michael did show, Dean had worked himself into a state. He had started to wonder if the angel ever would come back, if the mark on his arm somehow signified that he was to be left alone here, chained and helpless in his own mind, forever. </p><p>In a frenzy of desperation to attract attention, of whatever kind, he had even tried what Michael had forbidden; twisting his body against the bed to seek friction for his cock, attempting to get himself off. It hadn’t been terribly successful, because he couldn’t turn around far enough to rub himself against the mattress, and trying to trap it between his crossed legs just didn’t give the right kind of stimulation. But then he’d had the idea of snagging a pillow with his teeth, managed to drop it over his groin and then, by significant contortion and more stress on his abused wrists, got himself lying half on his side with his crotch up against the soft fabric. </p><p>Humping the pillow wasn’t very satisfactory, it turned out, because he wasn’t really horny, just grasping for options. All he managed was to make himself feel both a failure and a traitor to himself, at which point he slammed his head repeatedly against the wall in anger. That did very little besides bring on a headache, more from straining his neck muscles than from contact with the soft plush tiles; and then he gave way to some even more humiliating tears.</p><p>He was trying to get a grip on himself, breathing deeply (and somewhat shakily) with his eyes closed, and didn’t notice the door as it opened, soundlessly. Some deep instinct registered a presence by the bed and his eyes flew open, just as Michael began to speak.</p><p>“Dean, Dean, Dean,” he said slowly, and did he sound disappointed, or amused? It was impossible to tell. He held Dean’s eyes with his own, then raised an eyebrow and twitched the pillow out from under Dean’s hip. He knelt on the side of the bed and leaned over Dean, putting the pillow back against the wall and smoothing it into place.</p><p>“I… I’m sorry,” Dean whispered, his insides churning. <i>Please don’t punish me by leaving me alone again,</i> was what he thought, but he clung to enough shreds of his dignity not to say it aloud.</p><p>Michael reached out and stroked Dean’s hair and the side of his face. Dean fought (and won) an intense battle with himself, not to lean into the touch; but it cost him, as a quiet sob slipped past his guard.</p><p><i>“I’m</i> sorry,” said Michael, with quiet emphasis which made Dean catch his breath and look up, puzzled. “I knew you were awake, but… I was busy. I couldn’t come to you right away. Believe me, I didn’t leave you alone all this time through choice.”</p><p>Dean swallowed. So he wasn’t to be punished..?</p><p>“I thought you…” his voice cracked, rusty with the strain of the past however many hours, the frustrated shouting; and the screaming. He remembered screaming, with a vague, disjointed sort of objectivity; hurling his frustration and shame to the deadening velvet walls until his throat was raw. He coughed, tried again. “Thought something had happened. My arm…”</p><p>Michael’s eyes went unerringly to the mark on Dean’s arm, then back to his face. “You felt that?” he asked, softly.</p><p>“Fucking right I felt it, it hurt!” Dean rasped, struggling to sit upright, suddenly shaking with anger. “You bastard, you said you wouldn’t hurt me!” Never mind that he had welcomed the pain, clung to it as a reprieve from other, less noble sensations.</p><p>Michael reached to stroke his face again. “And I meant it,” he said. “That wasn’t my doing. Someone… sought to kill me. Us. I managed to twist aside at the last minute, or the spear would have penetrated your heart.”</p><p>Dean stared. Spear? So someone out there had a weapon that could injure, perhaps even kill, an archangel? Good news! If it didn’t seem likely to take him out along with Michael. He wondered if Sam knew anything about it. Knew it couldn’t actually have been Sam, because Michael would have mentioned that; had said ‘someone’, so it couldn’t have been anyone Dean knew. Still. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that; it lifted his spirits, just knowing they had a new potential ally.</p><p>“Don’t get your hopes up,” Michael said with a wry twist of his lips, as though he could read Dean’s mind (and he was in it, after all, so maybe he could? That would explain… a lot). “I am taking steps right now to eliminate that particular… nuisance. Besides, Dean. You don’t want to die. And there really is no other way of getting rid of me. I’m afraid you’re… stuck with me, for now and forever.” He stroked Dean’s face again, with the back of his hand this time, curling the fingers to brush his knuckles over the line of Dean’s cheekbone. </p><p>It was an oddly tender gesture, and Dean trembled from the effort of keeping still. What the hell was wrong with him? He wanted the bastard dead so badly, he had felt fierce exultation when he heard about the spear. And yet he wanted to turn and push his face into that gentle touch like a dog being petted. His emotions were all over the place; he couldn’t trust himself.</p><p>“So, since I’m here now,” Michael was saying, still rubbing his knuckles softly along Dean’s cheek, “how about we try to alleviate some of that… frustration you’ve been feeling?”</p><p>Immediately, Dean’s stomach sank, and suddenly he had to force himself not to pull away, as hard as he’d been trying not to do the opposite. Yeah that’s right, he told himself savagely; you make nice to the rapey angel, you get what you deserve. He felt the burn of shame heating him from head to curling toes.</p><p>Michael turned his hand, trailed questing fingertips over Dean’s face, along his jaw, down his throat and chest. Dean clenched his teeth and tried to face him down with a passive-aggressive stare, about all the resistance he could manage. It might have worked better (probably not) if Michael had actually been looking at his eyes, but his gaze followed his hand, his expression rapt.</p><p>“You should not be ashamed,” he murmured. “You are beautiful. So perfect. Your body knows what your mind refuses to acknowledge: that you were made for me; that you are mine. The sooner you come to realise and accept this, the sooner you can be happy. I can make you happy, Dean. I want to. I want to fill you with…” he stopped, his fingernails barely brushing the hairs of Dean’s treasure trail.</p><p>Dean stared, feeling saner and more horrified with each word Michael spoke. He could finish that sentence for him: “Want to fill you with my grace; get my rapey tentacles all around your soul.” This was some tip-top crazy, right here in the room with him, and if he wasn’t careful - if he did the least thing to encourage it - it would be right up inside him, too. </p><p>He shouldn’t have let himself forget what the angel was after; let himself fantasise about physical touches, when what Michael really wanted wasn’t physical at all. ‘You only want me for my soul,’ he thought with bitter irony. Just when he’d started to come around to the idea of sex, if only for something to distract him from his own screams.</p><p>Michael glanced up at his face at last, probably wondering why Dean was so quiet. “Will you let me make you happy?” he asked, softly. “I know what you like, Dean; I can make it so good for you.”</p><p>Well, as long as he was asking for permission… Dean crossed his legs, more to make a statement and because he couldn’t cross his arms than because the gesture did much to protect him. Glared back with as much intimidation as he could muster, naked and manacled to a wall. He was glad they’d had this little talk; it had really helped to ground him back in the reality of his situation.</p><p>Michael chuckled. “There’s my stubborn little mouse,” he said. “Or should I say mouse-lion? I thought perhaps you’d forgotten how to roar.” He sat back, laid his hands on Dean’s thighs and started massaging them gently while their gazes locked.</p><p>“What is it about you psychos,” Dean asked through gritted teeth, “always comparing me to an animal? Crowley used to call me Squirrel. Alastair’s pet name for me was Rabbit. I am <i>not</i> a fucking rodent!”</p><p>“No, of course not,” Michael soothed. “It’s just that… You are so delightfully soft and tender, on the inside. So fearful. You really do put on a most convincing act to appear otherwise; perhaps you even fool most people, most of the time. I doubt you fool your brother. Or anyone who knows you… intimately.” He ran his hands higher, gliding over Dean’s skin, getting a little too near his crotch for comfort.</p><p>“I thought you said you wanted a warrior,” Dean ground out. “If your opinion of me is so low, why are you even bothering?”</p><p>“Some of the bravest warriors in nature are mice, and other tiny creatures,” Michael stated, with a completely straight face. Was he freaking serious? “Which is braver,” he went on, “the lion with his formidable claws and teeth, or the mouse who jumps into the face of his foe? I never asked you to be formidable, Dean. I can supply that by myself. But you; you keep on trying, don’t you? You never stop jumping; hurling yourself at your enemies, no matter how much stronger and more powerful they are. That’s what I admire, your lion spirit.”</p><p>“Well, thanks for nothing,” Dean snarled, although even to his own ears it sounded a little sulky, “but just so you know, talking like that? Really not helping the mood.”</p><p>Michael laughed softly and bent down, planted a soft, lingering kiss on each of Dean’s thighs above his kneading fingers. “Well now, we don’t want that, do we?” he said silkily, glancing up from under lowered lashes, and Dean could see the smile lingering on his lips. “If my… lionheart is ready to play, of course I am… your devoted… servant.” He punctuated his words with more kisses. </p><p>Dean couldn’t believe his ears. Did this nutjob think he was being charming? And what for, when he was just going to take Dean anyway, the way he had the last two times?</p><p>“What’s your game, Michael?” he asked, wearily. “We both know you’re just going to rape me, it’s not like I can stop you; so why pretend? Just get on with it already.” Just let it be over, so he could go back to the boredom and self-detestation and similar mind-numbing pursuits. The way he kept switching between wanting first one and then the other, he wondered if his sanity was cracking.</p><p>But Michael was looking at him, intently and (he thought) a little sadly. His hands on Dean’s thighs had stilled. “I said I wanted to make it good for you,” he said, and was there the tiniest hint of protest in that level tone? “I heard you calling for me, but I had to get… events… under control. Now I want to make it up to you.”</p><p>Dean narrowed his eyes, suspicious. “No rapey grace tentacles?” he asked.</p><p>Michael blinked. “No… tentacles,” he affirmed, gravely. “Tell me what you would like, Dean. I’m listening.” He resumed kneading, gently stroking, and honestly, it was kinda nice.</p><p>Dean stared, his mind racing. If he just said no, Michael would probably (no, definitely) get bored, and then it would be grace time. If he could avoid that, any way possible… Keep him interested in non-tentacular, non-invasive, regular sex… Could he do it, though? Feign enough of an interest to fool him? He realised there was no fooling the guy, not with that direct feedback link he had going on. But if Michael kept his word and really tried to make it good… </p><p>He was so desperate by this point for any sign of human contact, affection, that Michael’s touch alone no longer made his skin crawl; he wanted it, was starting to crave it, and he knew already that his dick was way more on board than he wished. Michael was right; he was just an animal, a primitive, sex-crazed beast. He hated himself for it, but he would use it. Because if he could harness this drive to hook Michael in, to teach him the ropes of human erotic interaction, maybe he’d enjoy it so much he’d lose interest in the other thing. The thing above all else that Dean could not stand.</p><p>He swallowed, licked his lips; saw Michael watching and deliberately chewed a little on his lower lip to entice him. He uncrossed his legs, letting them relax, although keeping his thighs together - for now. Here goes nothing, he thought; well the guy did ask him what he wanted, it would be unreasonable to get pissed at an honest answer. And there was one thing that practically couldn’t fail to get him, or any man, aroused.</p><p>“Could you… I’d really like it if… you sucked my dick?” he tried, hopefully. Michael’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly as he searched Dean’s face (and probably his hormonal reactions, if not his actual thoughts) and Dean concentrated on thinking how it would feel – not specifically Michael, just the general idea of a hot, wet mouth around him, and oh yeah, that had him twitching down there, all right. No faking that. Michael was still thinking about it though, or it looked like it, so Dean tried to sweeten the deal.</p><p>“You could suck me, and then you could fuck me?” he suggested, all but batting his eyes. He canted his hips slightly, pushing up against the light pressure of Michael’s hands. “If you make me come, it’ll be easier… I never did that, before, so you’d be… the first… but we could try it?” </p><p>He swallowed again. Holy hell, the idea was actually turning him on. He wasn’t going to examine that, just run with it and be thankful. He could chastise himself later for being so easy, but right here, right now - anything but the soul rape.</p><p>Michael’s eyes narrowed even further, then he smiled, ducked his head and kissed Dean’s stomach. Moved down and laid another just above his dick, lips slightly parted so Dean could feel his breath ghost over his skin. “I like the thought of fucking you,” he murmured, and his lips moved to the shaft of Dean’s cock, at the base just below the constricting band of metal. Dean felt it twitch noticeably in response, let a small sigh pass his own lips.</p><p>Oh yeah, he thought to himself, that’s the ticket. Focus on this: moist, breathy heat over his cock, he could get behind that. And from there, turned on already, it wasn’t so much of a leap to getting fucked. He’d considered it before, just never found anyone he wanted to try it with. Honestly, if Michael had just asked nicely instead of shackling him to the wall; would keep to normal sex instead of the creepy and relentless grace invasion; he might have persuaded him. He’d come to the right vessel to learn - well okay, granted it was because he was in Dean in the first place - it was just his approach that was all wrong. Dean could get on board with just about any fetish, given suitable motivation; but consent was an immovable issue. </p><p>Michael moved on, laying a trail of gentle kisses along the length of Dean’s shaft. As he progressed, he let his tongue tip slide between his lips so that each kiss was a wet, licking caress that had Dean’s cock filling out nicely and leaking precome by the time Michael reached the head. Dean’s breathing was a little ragged by this point, his hands were clenched and he had to make an effort not to thrust his hips up; there was such a thing as being too easy.</p><p>Michael glanced up to take in Dean’s flushed cheeks and swollen lips, the hooded, dilated eyes, and smiled. He dropped a tiny, almost chaste kiss right onto the head of Dean’s cock, then swiped his tongue across the slit. Dean gasped and this time his hips did jerk, involuntarily, and his cock stood up proudly to attention. </p><p>Michael chuckled and slid his hands up to Dean’s hips, pushing him down; nuzzled his way back down the underside of his cock. When he reached his balls, he gathered them gently into his mouth and curled his tongue around them wetly, dragging a low groan from Dean’s throat.</p><p>Michael released his mouthful and asked, throatily, “Do you like the thought of me fucking you, Dean?” Dean moaned in response and let his legs fall open, because yes, apparently he did. </p><p>Michael pressed another kiss to Dean’s taint, then smoothed his hands down over his hips to curve around his buttocks, slid them up to grasp the inner part of his thighs, and pushed. “Open up for me, Dean,” he murmured, and Dean swallowed and spread his legs, lifting them, knees bent, to give Michael better access. </p><p>This is working, he thought, he was actually really turned on and Michael seemed to be on board with the program, although Dean was still hoping he’d get around to the actual cock sucking he’d asked for.</p><p>Michael kissed each of Dean’s ass cheeks in turn, then trailed his fingers back down, raising delicious goose bumps along Dean’s skin, to grasp and gently spread them apart. Dean wasn’t complaining, he really wasn’t, but his cock wasn’t getting any attention here and he knew he’d need a lot more preparation to take Michael inside him, so he whimpered and wriggled a little.</p><p>“Shh, little one, I’ve got you,” Michael whispered, and before Dean could work out how that endearment made him feel, Michael was tonguing his entrance and it felt so fantastic he nearly exploded off the bed. Michael’s hands were like steel bands around his waist though, holding him still, so he threw his head back and panted. Then Michael pushed, warm, wet muscle sliding deep into Dean and he let out a long, keening moan of arousal.</p><p>Michael kept going, tongue fucking him with deep, slow strokes until Dean was writhing beneath the pinioning hands and panting with want. His dick was rock hard and aching from the cock ring, and what was with that, anyway, the guy refused to suck dick but he was happy to mine his asshole with his tongue? </p><p>He couldn’t claim to have pulled that from Dean’s kink repertoire; his experiences were exclusively heterosexual and the only place his tongue had ever been down there was pussy. Sure, he’d wondered occasionally what it might be like with another guy, figured enough of them did it there must be something to it, but his fantasies had never ranged beyond the vanilla. </p><p>This, what Michael was doing to him now, was sensation past his wildest dreams, and as the whole point of the exercise was to keep Michael interested, he didn’t hold back from expressing how he felt. Mostly, he just groaned, but a lot of other accidental noises escaped; pathetic little mewling sounds he was too turned on to be embarrassed by right now, and occasional, disjointed words. Words like ‘fuck, yes’ and ‘oh, God’ and ‘please’ and he splayed his legs so wide he was going to give himself a hernia, but he didn’t care; he just needed to offer up every access to that fucking amazing tongue… </p><p>Which, it suddenly flashed across his fractured consciousness, was <i>his</i> tongue. Michael was going down on him with his own mouth, and that was so mind bendingly hot and filthy and wrong it pulled a deeper groan from him than any he’d given so far. It was fantastic, but still not quite enough to take him over the edge, and his cock was starting to hurt from the pressure, so he begged shamelessly:</p><p>“Please, Michael, I need it, you gotta, I can’t… Let me come, please…”</p><p>Michael withdrew and Dean whimpered, feeling suddenly empty. Wanting to be filled he begged again, “Fuck me,” his voice a needy whine. Michael took a moment to savour the look of Dean, wrung out and compliant, writhing wantonly before him. He knelt up between Dean’s thighs and reached down to unzip his pants, releasing his cock, the mirror image of Dean’s - except maybe not quite so engorged, because Michael wasn’t wearing a cock ring.</p><p>“Think you’re wet enough for me, little one?” he asked, and nudged the head of his cock against Dean’s entrance, which was loose and glistening with saliva.</p><p>“Oh-God-yes, please, do it; fuck me, right now,” Dean panted, and there wasn’t a shred of acting any more, he wanted, needed Michael so badly.</p><p>Michael used his hands to position himself, making sure the angle was just right, and brushed his fingers over the ring of muscle, dragging another moan from Dean’s lips and causing him to tremble. He slid forward, breaching the hole, and Dean felt suddenly stretched, so tight it almost burned, but so gloriously full; and he arched his back and shoved, impaling himself on Michael’s (his own!) dick with a shout. It slid impossibly far, the pleasure-pain almost too much, but he rode through it, panting through gritted teeth. </p><p>Michael pulled back and the head of his cock brushed against Dean’s prostate, making him shout again as another unbelievable welter of sensation threatened to overwhelm his senses. </p><p>Michael paused and Dean whined, wanting more now, harder, faster; and the archangel chuckled. “Feel good, little one?” he asked, and Dean just moaned, unable to form words. Then Michael pushed forwards again and hit that sweet spark of pleasure as he drove deep inside, and then he was fucking Dean rhythmically, sliding balls deep but nailing his prostate with each inward stroke, and Dean nearly whited out from sexual bliss.</p><p>Then, “Come for me, little one,” Michael growled, “I want to see you spill your pleasure for me like an offering,” and Dean’s cock throbbed and he was almost there, but teetering agonisingly on the edge. As though sensing what he needed, Michael put his hand around his cock, squeezing oh so gently, and pulled upwards: once, twice, three times as he continued to fuck into Dean in time with the strokes. </p><p>Then he lowered his other hand between their bodies to cup Dean’s balls and stroked the side of his finger against his taint, just as he squeezed a fourth time. His cock nudged his prostate again simultaneously, and Dean lost it. His come surged out over his stomach and chest and even his chin in a hot, wet flood as his ass clenched around Michael and he threw his head back and screamed.</p><p>Everything was static, white noise and light and electrical sensation like fireworks inside his body. Then as he gradually surfaced from the brain melting intensity of his orgasm, he could hear Michael’s low, rumbling voice, deep with arousal. He was saying, “So good, little one, just like that, you’re so good for me. I am going to make you mine, I will fill you so deep,” and Dean relaxed back bonelessly, still enjoying the sensation of his ass being filled. Contentment settled along his nerves and muscles as his dick finally started to soften, the pulsing ache subsiding now he was spent. </p><p>He was happy to just lie here (not as though he could do anything else) and let Michael take his time about enjoying his own orgasm. It might be Dean’s first time with a guy, but this was probably the first time ever for Michael, he thought, almost indulgently. He found it amusing to hear an archangel coming slowly undone, the way he had himself just moments before. </p><p>Once Michael realised how good normal sex could be, Dean figured he’d have a bit more leverage. Then it would just be a matter of time, of waiting for Sam and Mom and the other hunters to find Michael and put some brilliant plan of attack into operation...</p><p>Michael was reaching his climax, by the sound of his jerky, accelerated breathing, and the way he was pumping into Dean faster and faster. His eyes were closed and an intense look covered his face, lips slightly parted (and did Dean look that way when he was close?). It was getting a little sore down there but pain was an old, familiar enemy and this slow burn was nearly beneath his notice. If his hands had been free, he would have helped, stroking Michael’s chest and maybe playing with his nipples, although the shirt would have to come off first. But he couldn’t, and that’s what you get for chaining your lover to the wall, Dean thought, and had to bite down the laughter which would be really inappropriate timing right now. He decided to follow Michael’s example instead, and asked:</p><p>“Are you gonna come for me, Michael?” making his voice as husky and seductive as he could. The archangel groaned and shuddered, hanging his head, and Dean lifted his legs and wrapped them around Michael’s back. He squeezed his ass tight around him and had the fleeting satisfaction of seeing him unravel, mouth open on a soundless cry as he poured into Dean, a cooling flood that soothed the friction in his ass.</p><p>But… Something didn’t feel quite right, not that Dean had any prior experience; but Michael just kept on coming. He could feel the liquid pulsing against the walls of his channel and he would have thought it’d start leaking out but it just built up inside him, thick and viscous, clinging on somehow against gravity. He could feel himself swelling, stretching from the influx, and when Michael had said ‘gonna fill you so deep’ he hadn’t realised he’d meant it quite this literally. </p><p>Just as he was starting to groan, sure that he couldn’t take any more, that if it didn’t start to leak he was going to burst like an overfilled balloon, he felt the pressure loosen suddenly. There was a familiar, bubbling tingle in his blood as the stuff began to ooze <i>into</i> him, through the rectal lining, into his body; along the network of veins and arteries, creeping out towards his organs…</p><p>And he realised it wasn’t semen: Michael was ejaculating his <i>grace</i> into him. His stomach dropped like an elevator severed from its cables, all feelings of post-coital bliss evaporating in sudden panic. He moaned, but this time not in ecstasy, and tried to pull away, scrabbling backwards up the bed; but his back was already to the wall and Michael had him pinned. Dick in his ass to the hilt, still pumping, and how much fucking grace could one archangel contain anyway? </p><p>Dean suddenly recalled something Cas had once said, making the casual observation to their granddaddy Campbell that his true form was as big as the Empire State building, and that was a shit ton of grace to put into a person…</p><p>“No, no, no,” he heard himself whimpering as he struggled vainly to tear free, but Michael had him trapped. He kicked, driving his heels into Michael’s back, but Michael just reached around behind him, grabbed Dean’s legs and wrenched them apart, pinning them down onto the bed. His eyes flashed blue into Dean’s and he growled, “Lie still; you’ve had your turn, now it’s mine.” </p><p>“But you promised..!” Dean cried, and knew the instant the words left his mouth how hollow they were; how stupid he’d been to trust the bastard, after that first broken vow, to leave Dean’s body once he had taken care of Lucifer. </p><p>Michael didn’t even bother to reply, just held himself still as he shuddered, forcing more and more of his grace into Dean. It was rising inside him now like the drowning vortex from before his padded cell, swamping his body in light. </p><p>He whimpered, wordlessly pleading; choked. Lost consciousness, whiting out a second time; but far less pleasantly, as the invincible flood reached his brain.</p><p>
  
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
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</p><p>When he came to, Michael had gone again, and he could feel his own come dried and flaking on his skin. He lay there, staring sightlessly across the room, feeling about as wretched as he could ever remember.</p><p>Michael had tricked him. He had lied; he had promised not to use his grace, but then he had gone ahead and done it anyway. But did he lie, really? A tiny, insistent part of Dean’s mind asked, like a treacherous whisper. He had promised no tentacles, and there hadn’t been any; just that steadily rising flood pressure, filling Dean like an erupting geyser… <i>(No, don’t go there!)</i> </p><p>So the guy came grace, that made sense really, if he thought about it. Not exactly his fault, just the inevitable consequence of fucking Dean and being made to come. Dean had actually asked; begged him to do it, and it was likely the first time he had ever had sex, so expecting him to hold off somehow in the throes of…</p><p>No! Stop fucking excusing him, he raged at himself, silently. Stop rationalising this away, stop turning it around on yourself like you’re the guilty party here. He was bound to the bed, completely at Michael’s mercy, with nothing to do but grow bored and needy and desperate to do whatever his captor wanted. He was the victim here (he ground his teeth at the thought), he had never wanted any of this; he was just trying to survive. Michael was gentle with him, but he gave him no choice whatsoever; consent was out the stable door and racing for the hills. </p><p>And he might not be hurting Dean physically, but clearly he didn’t care that it hurt mentally. He didn’t stop when the emotional anguish was tearing Dean apart worse than the hooks and knives of Hell, when his pleasure turned to outrage and horror and disgust and he screamed to be released. No meant no, right? Even if you started out by saying yes - wasn’t that what all the women’s libbers kept drumming into society? - and they were right. Dean had always supported the notion of totally consensual sex. Free and easy, no obligations or regrets, both sides happy and satisfied - that was the whole point. He couldn’t enjoy it any other way. </p><p>Or so he’d thought, but now he was finding he could actually enjoy himself, even though at some point it always went beyond what he’d consented to; and what did that make him..? Dean didn’t like the words ‘slut’ and ‘whore’, the way they were used to describe women who were sexually active, who knew what they wanted. Nothing wrong with being ‘easy’ when it was just a mutual exchange of pleasure. </p><p>But there was nothing mutual about what was happening between him and Michael. He knew he was being used, hated the violation, and yet he was still eager for some part of it; starving for his captor’s attention and the smallest scraps of physical comfort. He was a whore, a needy slut; instead of holding out he was selling himself for an illusion of compassion, of mercy, of affection. All he was really doing was enabling his abuser. </p><p>He was weak, just as he had been down in Hell, and when he had borne the Mark. Dean Winchester, some hero; he was weak and needy and pathetic, spreading himself for his tormentor without the slightest self-respect. He was a disgrace. What would Sam think of him? Mom? Cas? Jack? Some mentor he was to the kid! What would Dad, up in Heaven, think if he could see Dean now… first a willing tool of Hell and now the grovelling sodomite for a twisted emissary of Heaven? He was disgusting, beyond sympathy. </p><p>Sure, Michael was the abuser, it was him who was doing all this to Dean, but he didn’t have to just roll belly up and present himself like a willing sex slave. He could resist, he <i>should</i> have resisted harder. He had given into his own miserable cravings and had sacrificed his self-respect to the one being he knew, better than anyone, could not be trusted. He was sending Michael very mixed signals, where a ‘no’ kept sliding into a ‘maybe’ and even an orgasm fuelled ‘yes’; and how could he expect an archangel to understand the difference? Dean was the one here with all the sexual knowledge and experience, but he couldn’t even seem to make up his own mind.</p><p>Michael was right; this was all Dean’s own fault. He was a sexual deviant who had brought it all on himself and he couldn’t imagine how the archangel could stand to look at him, after the filthy desires he had put in his head. He had wanted a warrior, and far from fighting him, Dean was acting like an ass-licking coward.</p><p>Well, it had to stop. He felt his self-recrimination boil up into fury, seething and volatile like a witch’s cauldron. Lying here wallowing in self-hatred might be all he was good for, but he still had a choice - the very last left to him - and he could still protest. He could make it clear that he might be Michael’s prison bitch, but he didn’t agree to it, didn’t <i>want</i> it, no matter how his body betrayed him. </p><p>Michael would have to take him again by force and this time, no matter how long he had to lie here suffering for it, Dean would hold out. Had to. He owed it to all of them, all the people who loved him and had put their faith in him, but most of all, he owed it to himself. Dean Winchester might be many things, and most of them beneath reproach, but he was no coward, dammit. Fighting was his life, it was all he knew, and fine! This situation demanded some novel techniques, but he would rise to the occasion… even if that was a hideously inappropriate pun.</p><p>When Michael came back, he wasn’t going to find Dean laid back and begging for it like a bitch in heat, and he could keep his charm and false promises and his ass-raping tentacle come to himself, until the only way he’d get what he wanted was to break that first pledge not to cause Dean physical pain. Then they’d both know what he was, and whatever happened after that, at least it wouldn’t be Dean’s fault.</p><p>     * * * * *     * * * * *     * * * * *     * * * * *     * * * * *</p><p>They were fine and noble sentiments, but they took absolutely no account of the grinding monotony. Nothing for him to do but dwell, nothing to see or hear but white walls and his own voice. It was borderline sensory deprivation and he couldn’t gauge the passage of time but he was depressingly sure it didn’t take many hours before his skin itched from the inactivity, almost as badly as when Michael touched him… </p><p>NO. Bad thought! Not going there again. Not enabling his own abuse. He was strong, or at least he would pretend to be strong, because otherwise - if he ever got out of here - he could never hold his head up to another hunter again; could never look Sammy in the eye with mutual pride and respect. Not that he had much respect left to lose at this point, but he held onto the last vestiges like a drowning man clinging to the broken spars of a shipwreck.</p><p>Time...</p><p>Dragged.</p><p>Slow as a mosquito being crystallised in amber.</p><p>At some point, he looked at his arm and noticed that the strange mark was gone. That might not mean anything; if it was just a reflection of real injury to his body, Michael could heal himself, and in any case Dean was just - what had he said? - a ‘cognitive construct’, so his responses might not follow a normal, biological timeframe. Still, it suggested a disquieting passage of time.</p><p>This brought it to his notice that his wrists ached, and he realised dully that he had been twisting his hands against the manacles - no point to it, just an unconscious, repetitive motion that might hint at a desire to escape; might just be to feel something, anything, to remind him that he still had sensation. To prove that he wasn’t some kind of living corpse, lying here in a padded coffin. Unable to scratch, to pound on the lid, to scream for release…</p><p>He could pray. Cas wasn’t the angel he had once been, not since the Fall, but he might still hear Dean, might… what? How would that help? They knew Michael had him, were surely doing everything in their power to stage a rescue, but they were up against an archangel - demonstrably the most powerful of them all - and Dean had no idea where they might find him. ‘Cas, help me, I’m trapped in my own mind’ - it wasn’t new information.</p><p>He was alone, and there was no one to help him. It was just him and Michael: his captor, his possessor - his owner. He had two choices: to capitulate, or to resist. He had tried the former, which hadn’t made the slightest difference, and was disgusted with his own weakness; that left only one course of action. It was the harder, and the lonelier, and the way of the warrior: of the hero he wanted to be.</p><p>So his mind continued to circle, fleeing with revulsion from the thought of giving in, giving up, giving Michael what he wanted; but coming back again each time, crawling like a timid scavenger in the desert to sniff at a ripe carcass.</p><p>Over what might have been days or even weeks of slipping in and out of consciousness, he felt himself slowly fracturing apart. Pieces of himself - his thoughts, his memories, his very identity - broke off and drifted away like calving icebergs in a frozen sea of white velvet. His muscles twitched and burned and went numb with the inactivity, and then he felt as though he were floating out on the ice, cold and lifeless and abandoned. </p><p>The only things that anchored him to life were the golden rings around his cock and wrists, like bands of fire, tugging him down and holding his soul earthbound like a leash.</p><p>He was… </p><p>Nothing.</p><p>Nothing but the fierce, primal core of his will to resist.</p><p>There was a saying, ‘the mind is willing but the flesh is weak’; but it was backwards. In here, it was all in his mind, the flesh was just an illusion. His virtual body trembled and ached and throbbed for the sensation of touch, to be brought back to itself, before he lost too many pieces to fit the puzzle together again.</p><p>Resolutely, he ignored it. He was Dean Winchester, he was a hunter, a hero; he would hold out. He was nothing, but that was better than being <i>something,</i> if that something was a plaything, an archangel’s sex toy.</p><p>He wanted…</p><p>Escape. Release. To be set free, of this prison, of responsibilities, of his own traitorous needs.</p><p>Of life, if necessary. If it came to that; so be it. There was nowhere they could send his soul that would be worse than here; he had experienced all of them, Heaven, Hell and Purgatory.</p><p>He prayed, silently. ‘Use the spear, Cas. End it. End us both. You can’t save me, but maybe you can save the world,’ because he had no doubt that while he lay here, imprisoned in his own mental dungeon, Michael was out there, using his body to wreak havoc. Establishing his new world order, the way he had done in his own universe. </p><p>It was entirely possible that he prayed to nothing, that Cas was gone; Sam was gone; that he had lain here already for centuries while Michael ignored him, relying on time to wear him down. What was time to an archangel, who was timeless, immortal - had been here since before the earth was formed? He could wait, and Dean would have to wait with him, and endure.</p><p>If only waiting weren’t the hardest torture he had ever had to bear.</p><p>If only Michael would actually come back, so that Dean could show him his new resolve, so that his struggle might mean something instead of this hollow feeling of wasting away into the void like dust on the wind.</p><p>If he didn’t return soon, Dean might be gone, dissolved; his precious soul snuffed out like a guttering lighter; and would there be anyone left to mourn him? Would even Michael, truly, care?</p><p>
  
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
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</p><p>At some point, it slipped gradually into his consciousness that he was no longer alone; that Michael had come back. He must have been here for some time in fact, he was sitting on the edge of the bed and - Dean cracked one eye open and blinked it swiftly closed again - watching him with a measured look of mild… concern would be painting too vivid a picture, but Dean definitely had his attention.</p><p>Good. Now fuck off, he thought, and tried to drift off again.</p><p>“You’re awake,” said Michael, with the vaguest hint of a query in his voice, and his hand stroked along Dean’s hair and cheek. Dean did his level best to make like the dead.</p><p>“You weren’t supposed to wake up yet,” Michael said next, and that… was interesting. Dean schooled himself not to react.</p><p>“I know you can hear me,” came the inevitable statement, and okay fine; but Dean wasn’t really trying to fool him, it was just easier to lie here than to interact. Somehow, interaction always got him where he least wanted to go, and unless Michael felt like fucking an inanimate body - the way Prince Charming had in that really pretty fucked up adult version of Snow White he’d once read - lying still should keep him reasonably safe.</p><p>Even if it didn’t, not reacting was a kind of resistance; wasn’t it? Not like yelling and struggling had done him any good before, and this way would be so much less exhausting.</p><p>A long-suffering sigh exhaled above him. “Really, Dean? You’re going with ignoring me now?” the archangel asked, in the infuriatingly reasonable tones of a parent dealing with a stubborn child. Which was even more messed up, considering what he’d been doing to Dean, so he felt that it only bolstered his case for not answering.</p><p>After a lengthy pause in which Michael did nothing more than to stroke Dean’s hair (and honestly, it was pretty soothing, and if he wasn’t careful he might put Dean to sleep for real) he said, </p><p>“Are you being like this because you think it will make me go away, or because you’re annoyed with me for leaving you alone for so long? How long have you been awake? You should have called me, Dean. I don’t - you have more privacy in here than perhaps you think. I thought I had left you sleeping, and if I had known you were waiting for me, I would have come.”</p><p>He sounded genuinely perplexed, almost hurt, as though it was in any way reasonable to expect Dean to want to call him - after everything he’d done, never mind the abuse itself, but the way he constantly lied and manipulated him into being the good little sex slave! The indignation finally motivated Dean to open his eyes. He glared at his captor with all the seething fury and disdain he could dredge up. Remembered the resolve he had clung to as he’d drifted in a timeless sea of introspection.</p><p>“I was awake,” he growled, “I don’t know how long, but for - a long time. But there’s been no misunderstanding; I didn’t call because I was perfectly fine by myself. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I want you, in any way, under any circumstances. I won’t be your slave, or your pet, or your plaything, or whatever it is you want from me. I’d rather be dead. Now feel free to go away again and leave - me - the HELL - alone!”</p><p>“Oh, Dean.” Michael actually sounded remorseful, and he returned his hand (which he had drawn back when Dean replied) to petting his hair, and now, his face. “You are angry, and that’s understandable. I have been neglecting you, and I am sorry for it. It was truly never my intent. You should have been… Well. No matter. But I did begin to sense that all was not as it should be, and so I came to see how you were.”</p><p><i>‘All was not as it should be’?</i> “Ya think?!” Dean snarled, explosively, and he heaved himself upright against his manacles. He thrust his face right into Michael’s, teeth gritted and jaw jutting belligerently. Michael blinked, but did not back away by so much as a hairsbreadth, though his hand had fallen to the bed as soon as Dean began to move.</p><p>“Let’s get this straight,” Dean continued, clipping off each word with icy fury. “You can hold me prisoner, and you can torture me, or rape me, or leave me in sensory deprivation until I go insane; and, shit, you can pretend to be as concerned as you like, you can even hold a fucking tea party and braid my hair and paint my nails. And maybe my traitorous body will get so starved of attention that it’s ready to sit up and beg at just the crook of your little finger; but do not EVER fool yourself into thinking that means a goddamned thing more than an unconscious physical reaction.”</p><p>He paused for breath, glaring at the mirrored face opposite his own, until he felt as though his own eyes must be burning as bright as Michael’s. </p><p>“I will NEVER give in to you,” he went on, slower now, stressing his point. “I will never want you, I will never call for you, and I will definitely never hand over my soul to you, so you can do what you want to me and I’m sure you will; but it won’t get you anywhere.” </p><p>He sniffed, nostrils flaring as though he detected something unpleasant. “So don’t come in here, acting all surprised that I’m not ready to welcome you with open arms,” he shook the manacles in sarcastic emphasis, “because believe it or not, as disgusting as it is to have to choke down your filthy grace every time you try to cop a feel of my soul, it’s a damn sight better than just laying back and chugging it down like Kool Aid. I am not yours, I will never be yours, and you. Can’t. MAKE ME!!!”</p><p>He slumped back against the pillows, panting slightly after the exertion of spitting his conviction into Michael’s face, and let his arms go slack in the manacles.</p><p>Michael stared back at him, his eyes glowing like stars, and positively beamed; for the first time since Dean had seen him, his lips split in a toothy, delighted grin.</p><p>Crap.</p><p>“Oh, my little mouse,” he breathed, almost reverently. “My lionheart! That’s the spirit. There’s that unquenchable fire I’m so drawn to. You are so strong, so proud and indomitable, and perhaps you are right! Maybe you never will give in. I almost hope you don’t; because I am enjoying the challenge so very much. I was truly worried for a moment, there, that I had broken you - quite unwittingly - through tedium, and that just would not do. I must be careful, in future, to check on you regularly and be sure you are sleeping when you should be.” </p><p>He put out his hand again but this time, only laid it softly on Dean’s chest, over his beating heart; or where it would be beating in his real body, whatever that was doing while Michael was here to make nice, apparently. The angel went on, his tone grave and almost penitent.</p><p>“I really don’t want you to throw yourself upon my mercy, Dean; I told you before that I don’t mean to hurt you, and torture, whether by pain or deprivation, is such a - crass way of trying to bend someone’s will. I want you whole, not broken; it is demons who wish to blacken and quench that shining soul of yours, not I. My regret would be profound if I were to damage something so exquisite.”</p><p>The hand on Dean’s chest started to stroke, tiny, caressing movements of the fingers over his skin. The angel’s words and his actions seemed sincere, benign; but his gaze was predatory, the blue fire of his eyes showing nothing but hunger.</p><p>No, Dean thought, you’re not gonna injure me; because then you couldn’t keep on doing this. But you don’t care if I’m hurting. Dumbass didn’t seem to realise that if he kept on, he would break Dean. There was more than one kind of damage, and if you kept trying to bend something that, well, didn’t want to be bent – eventually you were gonna fuck it up beyond recovery. He felt like he was already more than halfway there.</p><p>Suddenly, Dean snapped. He’d had enough of this; the whole pointless, agonising charade, going round and around endlessly, just like that dancer on the jewellery box. He’d been there before, someone else’s puppet, a victim to pain and savagery, and so he had no illusions. He knew he was going to give in, eventually; he had just been hoping for rescue before it happened. </p><p>But although he couldn’t mark time in here, he knew, by some kind of primal itching at the base of his brain, that he had been here a lot longer than his waking experiences would tally. There wasn’t going to be any rescue. They weren’t coming for him, because they didn’t know where Michael was; and even if they did, they had no way to fight him. They could even all be dead, already.</p><p>Nothing he could do about any of it, except surrender - and he wasn’t going to do that! - but that didn’t mean he had to keep on circling, dancing to Michael’s tune.</p><p>“Stop pretending you give a crap about the state of my soul,” he said dully, staring into his own face (but never his eyes) with a weary resignation that bordered almost on acceptance.</p><p>Michael cocked his head, his eyes narrowing, but his fingertips didn’t let up their rhythmic petting.</p><p>“You must know,” Dean went on, “that you have to break me before I’ll give in to you, and how shiny and perfect will it be then? Not like it hasn’t been done before.” He laughed suddenly, a joyless bark of mirth that made Michael blink a second time.</p><p>“It took Alastair thirty years to break me the last time, and he wasn’t trying to blacken my soul either. He didn’t want to turn me into a demon, because then I wouldn’t have been righteous any more; he needed me to break the seal. I’m guessing that’s why it was so easy for Cas to come in and get me out; they didn’t need me anymore. They got what they wanted, and then I wasn’t any more use to them. I could have saved myself a lot of pain and just given in at the start; outcome wouldn’t have been any different. My soul wouldn’t have been any worse, or better, off.”</p><p>Michael nodded, slowly. “So you finally accept the pointlessness of resisting?” he asked, his fingers never stilling their butterfly tattoo over Dean’s heart. “You are ready to let me in, at last? I will be so good to you, Dean, you won’t regret-”</p><p>“I’m not giving in, I just TOLD you that,” Dean interrupted him, rolling his eyes. “When are you gonna get it, you sick, stupid fuck? If you want me, you’ll have to break me, and you won’t like me nearly so much in pieces. But that’s your problem. I’m done trying to have anything to do with this situation. You’ve made it so there’s nothing I can do, so, I’m out. You carry on and do what you want; I’m just gonna lie here and take it like, oh, the guy who’s manacled to the wall as a freaking sex slave.”</p><p>He rattled his cuffs, feeling briefly elated that he had pierced Michael’s composure; he knew his own face, and that expression said ‘What the fuck?’ as clearly as if Michael had uttered the words. His fingers had stilled, but Dean barely noticed; he was finally, actually getting through to the bastard.</p><p>“I don’t want you as a slave,” Michael said now, his tone all injured innocence, almost sulky. “I keep telling you, I want you to enjoy this. If you would just stop struggling, and let me-”</p><p>“Thought you liked my struggling,” Dean shot back, triumphantly. Michael looked nonplussed, and Dean forged on while he had an opening.</p><p>“The thing is, you’re a rapist.” He explained the obvious as patiently as if he were now the one talking to a child. “You want me, sure, but the ‘getting’ is more important than the ‘having’. It’s all about the conquest. It’s no fun to you if I just roll over and say ‘yes sir, more please!’ - that doesn’t float your boat. You can’t get it up unless you’re hurting me, not physically-” he shook his head, forestalling the protest that he could see rising to Michael’s lips, “-but emotionally. Psychologically. You want to batter me down, force me into submission, to know that you’re taking something from me.”</p><p>Michael had gone very still and was staring at him now, intently, his lips pressed into a cold, thin line. Dean was reminded, once again, of a snake. He squashed a shiver as he hurried to continue, before that icy control broke and the angel’s anger rolled over him like the flood from a bursting dam.</p><p>“All this bullshit about wanting to understand the human condition, about wanting me to enjoy it; either you’re lying to me, or you’re lying to yourself. You just want to break me, like all the rest of them. You’ve found a new way to go about it, that doesn’t leave you mopping blood off the nice white walls, but you’re no different from any other monster. You’re no different from Alastair. You’re no different from your brother, Lucifer. You don’t value the human soul any more than he did, you just want to crush it and roll around in the glitter like a pig in-”</p><p>He didn’t get any further. With a roar of rage, his face contorting in a spasm of fury, Michael pounced. He shoved his knees to either side of Dean’s chest, grasped both his wrists and bore down until his face was pressed so close that they could have been kissing; but kissing was clearly very far from the archangel’s current state of mind.</p><p>“You think I don’t wish to take care of you?” Michael growled, and his voice was soft but so full of menace it made Dean’s skin prickle as all the hairs stood up on end. The archangel grinned at him, savagely; more of a snarl, showing all of his teeth. “Then let me demonstrate by example, since you refuse to hear what I say. Afterwards, you can tell me whether you prefer it rough or gentle; then you cannot deny that I am giving you a choice.”</p><p>Dean swallowed and stared up into his own enraged features, his heart rate accelerating. Possibly he had taken things too far this time and was seriously going to regret what was about to happen. On the other hand, he regretted everything that had happened since he said ‘yes’ to Michael, apart from saving Sam and Jack; and really, how much worse could it get..?</p><p>Michael sat back, so that he was straddling Dean’s groin, and suddenly, he was naked; the natty grey thirties suit and cap vanishing like a magician’s trick. He was hard, too, his cock standing full and proud. It jutted aggressively over Dean’s, which twitched as though recognising its twin. There was a sound like distant thunder and the shadow of his wings stretched across the entire width of the cell like storm clouds, backlit by his skin, which seemed to glow as if from within, turning him into a statue of alabaster with lightning eyes.</p><p>Dean was not a vain man, but it wasn’t really his own body he responded to as he looked at his mirror image revealed in divine and wrathful splendour. Michael was beautiful; terrifying; entrancing. Dean shrank back into his pillows but was unable to look away, and his cock surged, rising to meet Michael’s as though magnetised. He couldn’t help it; didn’t want to help it; was suddenly, achingly desperate to be taken and claimed and ravaged by the magnificent being kneeling over him. A small sound like a muffled sob might have escaped his lips, but his ears were ringing so he couldn’t even hear himself.</p><p>Michael stared down at him for the space of a dozen or so beats of Dean’s racing heart, his face stony, his lips drawn into a cold, cruel smirk.</p><p>“Like what you see, little mouse?” he purred, deadly as a stalking lion. “Then look upon my glory, and despair!”</p><p>The light within his skin began pulsing, then gathered towards his face and groin, so bright it left the rest of him in shadow. Then, the radiance began to spill out from his lips and the tip of his cock in a thick, shining tide that separated gradually, parting and reforming into luminous tendrils. Dean watched with horrified fascination as the light shimmered with the illusion of scales; tiny azure pinpoints winked in and out at the creeping tips like eyes, and the points seemed to flicker like forked and questing tongues. The flood undulated forth like a seething mist filled with snakes, and the lower effluence settled over Dean, wrapping around him softly and seductively until his own cock and hips and stomach and thighs were awash with a corded layer of brilliance.</p><p>It stung, just a little, not quite reaching the threshold of pain. The touch of grace was like ice cold water charged with a mild electrical current, prickling and stimulating and not quite burning, until Dean gasped with the pleasure of galvanised nerves. He was starting to wonder if Michael really didn’t have the first clue about human reactions after all, because if this was meant to be rough sex then Dean was a born-again bdsm afficionado, no question. He could do without the snakes, but tentacles were another matter, and if he just didn’t look down...</p><p>There was up to consider though, too. The effusion continued to pour from Michael’s lips, but did not settle over Dean like the flood from his groin. It floated unsupported above him, then split like a river parting around a great rock in its path. The two branches coiled and solidified like thick, luminous vines, and Dean watched, helplessly enthralled, as they dipped, seeking his arms. They wound about him from wrist to shoulder, enveloping his upper limbs with the sensation of ice and fire. He felt the same freezing caress over his legs and glanced down, to see a similar pattern in the grace blanketing his midriff, as many (but not all) of the snakes (no, think of them as tentacles!) twined together to form thicker ropes which now encircled him from his knees to the crease of his thighs.</p><p>The glowing cords tightened suddenly, retracting, and hoisted him up off the bed. His arms strained for a moment and then his wrists sprang free from the wall, still enclosed in their manacles. The pulsing mass fell away from his groin, which felt hot and achingly heavy in its absence, but the larger ropes - or tentacles - pulled apart his limbs so that he was held spread eagled in the air between them. His cock - which was now straining as hard as Michael’s - was now level with the archangel’s face. He tried hoping that would turn out to be a good thing, but it also brought it closer to the smaller, snakey tendrils which whispered and flickered like tongues of blue fire from between the archangel’s lips.</p><p>“Are you ready to accept me, to embrace me as your lord and master, to give in to me in all ways and let me possess your very soul?” Michael asked, and his voice was like the hissing of an encroaching storm, snakes in distant thunder.</p><p>“No,” Dean managed, but his own voice seemed weak and pitiful in contrast.</p><p>“As you wish,” the storm voice purred, and with a rattling slither like an onslaught of hail, the coiling mass of snakes stiffened, aligning like arrows, and sprang towards Dean’s face.</p><p>He screwed his eyes and lips as tight as he could but knew it wouldn’t matter. Nothing he did mattered to Michael; he was as helpless and objectified before him as an inflatable doll.</p><p>The tingling chill broke over him like surf, invading him as easily and mercilessly as the ocean. Michael’s grace surged into him, up his nose and into his ears, sliding between pinched lips and up under his trembling eyelids, a thousand wicked snakelets questing eagerly for the brightness at his core. The deluge thronged his throat, choking him, forcing his mouth wide as the tendrils poured inside him in an ever increasing flood.</p><p>At the same time, he felt the biting slickness as other tentacles renewed their assault on his nether parts, clamping around his dick and balls and thrusting at his perineum. He moaned through stretched, gorged lips as the probing spearhead breached his hole, forcing its way up his channel in a smooth, explosive glide that brought tears to his eyes and wrenched a strangled, gagging yell from his congested throat.</p><p>He would have struggled, then, regardless of his intent to ride this out as impassively as the toy Michael had made of him, but the four thicker tentacles stretching his limbs held him immobile. The frigid surge seemed to push deeper, pummeling him like a battering ram at both ends, forcing more and more of Michael’s grace into his throat and ass and every other nook and cranny they could discover… <i>every</i> other, as he felt an icy tendril rooting at the slit of his cock and then plunging in, right down inside his shaft, pulsing and swelling. </p><p>It was indescribable, neither pleasure nor pain but some novel, bastard hybrid of the two, running a line of fire down the centre of his dick like a welding iron. He screamed, his eyes flying wide and blind on a dizzying rush of blue-white light…</p><p>And the sounding tendril oozed past his prostate just as the thicker invader in his ass bulged, caressing the spot from the other side. He was squeezed between the two like coaxing fingers, wringing the sensations back to the side of pleasure, but so heightened he could still barely distinguish it from torment. His cock throbbed, and he felt his balls draw up despite the metal band that gripped him, like a ring of fire around his shaft; then the tendrils wrapped around his balls, squeezing and stretching them away from his body, and as though from very far away he heard Michael say to him softly, “No, my pet, you don’t get to come until I’m done with you.”</p><p>He was held like that for a long time, speared like a spitroast on the probing tentacles as they filled him like a rushing river. They seemed to meet each other somewhere around the region of his stomach, where he could feel them coiling around and distending his flesh, filling him up like an unending draught of water. They pulsated and began to move back and forth, pumping him slowly and thoroughly, in time with the massaging pressure on his prostate. </p><p>He was stretched taut, open and invaded and impossibly violated, his nerves singing to the raw, unending pleasure. He needed to come with an urgency that boiled his blood, but the ring and tendrils clamping his cock and balls were adamant. He might have been screaming, or only capable of moaning, or he might long since have stopped being able to make any sound at all.</p><p>He waited for the rest of the invasion, for the grace to suffuse his blood and titillate his organs, reaching for his soul until he passed out like he had before; but it never came.</p><p>“Let me in,” breathed across his mind like an insidious whisper of wind, “and you can come. Give yourself to me and I will grant you the relief you crave.”</p><p>He didn’t have the capacity to respond, even with a thought, he was so unravelled and strung out; but somehow, although it felt as though every cell in his body ached for release, he endured.</p><p>He didn’t lose consciousness, but gradually, he lost his grip on what made him himself; on who and what and where he was, and even what was happening to him. Everything was light and sensation, a paroxysm of agonised bliss. Michael was in him, and he was a part of Michael; they were one and the same, drowning and ascending together in rapture.</p><p>Still, throughout all of it, he held onto that one last spark of identity, his shivering soul which burned its defiance like a beacon in the night, keeping the scintillating tendrils at bay by sheer force of conviction. He knew nothing except the light and the torment, until suddenly they were both retreating. He still knew nothing, his senses and his sentience reeling, blasted by the assault; but as he sank into welcoming darkness he held onto one thing to keep his sanity from flying out into the void. </p><p>His resolve had held firm; he had not given in.</p><p>
  
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Dear reader, it is well worth taking the time to <a href="https://blindswandive.livejournal.com/92260.html">visit the artist's LJ</a> and zoom in on this illustration, to really appreciate all the intricate detail - the wicked little snake heads, the Enochian on Dean's bindings, the texture of the tentacles, the gleam in Michael's eye - I am continually bowled over by how perfect and stunning and eerie and beautiful this artwork is! 💗</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>Most of Dean’s dreams in here were nightmares, disturbing reflections of his situation: drowning, or suffocating beneath a heaving body that was all hands, plucking over every inch of his flesh as he smothered. Being tied down and helpless while evil menaced him or (even more terrifyingly) Sam; a lot of piercing blue eyes that drilled into him like lasers, exposing his deepest shame, while his enemies jeered and taunted. And the snakes, that was always a fun go-to: burrowing into him and melting, hissing, into his flesh like brine into sand while he lay there transfixed with horror - the way those kinds of nightmares always went - unable to move a muscle. </p><p>There was also one, insidiously regular, where he was performing a striptease up on a pole dancer's podium, while Michael looked on smiling from the shadows. Only the gleam of his eyes and teeth were visible in the reflected rainbow glare of the disco lighting. That one was even worse than the snakes; it made him feel dirty and ashamed.</p><p>Gradually, a new thread invaded his dreams, an undercurrent like the barest whisper on the breeze. Snatches of what sounded like conversation; the voices of people he knew and loved. They buoyed him in his sleep and the nightmares withdrew, leaving him riding a rolling surf of peace and contentment as the sun warmed his back.</p><p>The waves carried him gently to shore and deposited him on a sandy beach, where he stood up, opened his eyes... and awoke in his padded cell. But the voices didn’t stop.</p><p>Directly across from him, hanging on the wall dead centre in his line of sight, was a giant TV screen he would have done unconscionable things to have in the bunker. It was blank with a fuzz of static, but the voices were emanating from it as from a badly tuned radio, and as he concentrated he could make out familiar, distinctive tones.</p><p>Sam. He would know that voice anywhere, follow it out of dreams and into Hell itself, wherever his brother wanted to lead him. And Cas; that gravelly burr with such level inflection, calm and serious amid the rise and fall of human excitement. </p><p>As he lay and listened, staring mesmerised at the screen as though he could force it by will alone to resolve the picture of the speakers, he made out other voices. Jack, speaking up occasionally to ask his artless questions. Bobby; he could swear he just heard the man utter his renowned catchword ‘idjits’ and although this must be the new Bobby from Michael’s world, it still warmed him with a flood of sentiment for his old friend. A nasal twang, high and excited; was that Garth? And a woman, oh God, that was Mom..! His chest clenched in the primal desire of a hurt child to run and be comforted by his mother. </p><p>He wondered what was going on, why he could hear them suddenly. Had Michael installed this, or was it a manifestation of his own mind, interpreting the voices which were somehow falling on his - now Michael’s - ears? But if Michael could hear them, then that would mean he was with them somehow; had they captured him? Or was he eavesdropping, invisibly, so powerful he could bypass the bunker’s wards, which after all had been set by an organisation which didn’t know a great deal about angels? </p><p>Fearful and full of hope, he strained his ears to make out more of the conversation, and managed to piece together enough to understand that they were hatching a plan to rescue him. It could be a trick, but it was so unlike anything Michael had done to him before, it had to be real! He had to believe it; concentrating on the voices of his friends, the hope of rescue, helped him to shut off the horror of his ordeal, to compartmentalise. He was good at that; had more than a lifetime’s experience to fuel the necessity.</p><p>Maybe Cas had found a way to contact him somehow! Perhaps he had managed to forge a telepathic link over that ‘profound bond’ he liked to say they shared. Dean found it privately endearing, but had always interpreted it as the angel’s typical naive intensity, colouring his perception of simple friendship. But maybe there was something in it, after all, and Cas was using the bond now to let him know he was not forgotten. The TV reminded him strongly of the way Cas had helped him and Sam that time when they’d raided Heaven, so long ago, to find Joshua in the Garden and try to get through to God. </p><p>The gist of their plans seemed to be to send in Garth as some kind of informant on the inside; apparently, Michael was raising an army of monsters (and Dean had known he must be up to something but seriously, what the fuck?) and since Garth was a werewolf now, he might be considered a worthy recruit. Dean was dubious; Michael wasn’t stupid, and he would know the hunter from Dean’s memories. It seemed more likely to him that they were sending Garth to his death and he wished he could warn them, but he wasn’t about to start yelling at the TV screen. He doubted whether he could get through to them, but Michael was sure to hear him.</p><p>The voices ebbed and flowed as he lay there with nothing else to do, seizing on the distraction of this new (and solitary) stimulus as well as the hope it kindled. Sometimes they would fall silent for long periods, or there would only be one or two people speaking. They were clearly in the bunker because the voices he heard the most were Sam and Cas and Jack, his new little close-knit family. Team Free Will, Mark II. A lot of the chatter was inconsequential, domestic stuff; what people wanted for breakfast, where they stored the fresh linens, could they really be out of toilet paper already? It was nice: comforting, a reminder that no matter what Dean himself might be going through, at least those near and dear to him were alive and well and - relatively - safe.</p><p>It also helped him to mark time.</p><p>One conversation he overheard was puzzling, and more than a little upsetting. It sounded like Cas and Jack were having breakfast together; Jack asked Cas not to tell Sam he was eating sugary cereal, and Dean smiled - that’s my boy! - but then they started talking about Jack having gone through some rite of passage, just like they all had, with his recent death and resurrection. What the hell were they talking about, when - and <i>how</i> - did Jack die?! </p><p>As if that mysterious revelation weren’t enough, it was then Jack’s turn to talk about something Cas had been through, some deal he had made with the Empty. About it coming for him when he was happy, but Jack mustn’t worry, because this life offered so little happiness. Dean felt a brief stirring of guilt at that admission, but he had enough on his plate right now; time enough to try and make things right if - when! - he was rescued.</p><p>Jack asked why he couldn’t tell Sam and Dean about the deal, and Cas told him he didn’t want to burden his friends. What had been happening out there, to Dean’s family, while Michael had him chained up in here as his own personal sex doll? Dean clenched his fists and tugged futilely against the manacles, without any expectation that they might break loose. </p><p>And what the hell, Cas, their lives weren’t exactly peachy, but until this whole shit-show with Lucifer and Michael they had been doing okay. They had one another, and the bunker; they had rescued Mom and Jack and all the hunters from Apocalypse World; Dean had figured they were on a rare upswing. Couldn’t Cas find something to be happy about in all that? </p><p>Maybe he was just upset now because Dean was missing, but he wished his friend would confide in Sam, at least. Jack was just a kid; he didn’t have Sam’s worldly wisdom and shared experience of the hardships they had come through together, which would help Cas through whatever he was feeling. Sammy liked nothing better than to play counsellor, with all his insistence on sharing and caring, and Dean would bet the farm that Sam was hurting right now - worried for him - and would welcome the distraction of helping someone else.</p><p>The conversation between Cas and Jack had been clearer than most, as though for some reason Dean had better reception, and it occurred to him that it was good supporting evidence the audio was coming directly from Castiel. On this occasion, he had been talking privately with Jack, with nobody else around to overhear his secrets or waylay the conversation. It seemed like the sort of news he might want to share with Dean; but it was frustrating, picking up such tantalising glimpses without knowing the full details. </p><p>Couldn’t Cas just tell him what was going on, in a direct, personal update? Why all the cloak and dagger eavesdropping rigmarole; was he trying to avoid alerting Michael? Or could it be that the communication was accidental, that Cas didn’t realise he had linked in to Dean? Maybe it was the other way around; perhaps Dean, in his floating state of near total sensory deprivation, had developed the link himself. Reaching out across their bond with his desperate prayers for help.</p><p>Whatever was going on, after some more time during which nothing much happened and Dean’s eyes started crossing from staring at the pictureless screen, Jack began speaking again. He was talking to Ketch - that plummy British accent soon gave him away - in an exchange that sounded more like a phone call than a face-to-face discussion.</p><p>Then Cas joined in, interrupting the man’s grandstanding to ask about eggs, of all things; if he had been able to reach his ears, Dean would have wiggled his fingers in his ear holes to clean them out. Ketch explained that he was sending them some kind of weapon in the mail. The word ‘egg’ kept coming up, and then Sam, exasperated, said that they needed it right away for their planned attack on Michael. Finally it clicked into place: they were talking about that golden egg bomb thing they had used to blast Lucifer out of the President. So his team was planning to use the Holy Hand Grenade on Michael? Go Sammy! Dean wanted to punch the air, but had to settle for making a fist and beating it silently on the velvet wall behind him.</p><p>They made their plans: Sam and Jack would go to pick up the egg from some courier facility in Missouri where it was being held up in transit, while Cas, Mom and Bobby would go to Nebraska to meet with someone they called Dark Kaia, at a hiding place Garth had found out. So the plucky little hunter had managed to infiltrate Michael’s army after all! The plan here was to convince this ‘Dark Kaia’ to lend them her spear, before Michael could kill her and take it for himself.</p><p>Dean frowned, his mind racing to connect the fleeting concepts. The Kaia he remembered was dead, killed by the hooded figure they’d encountered on that unpleasant forested world from her visions, which she had called the Bad Place. Her killer had wielded a spear… and Michael had mentioned a spear, when some mysterious stranger tried to kill him - and made such an impression the wound had even marked Dean’s arm here, inside his virtual headspace. Was there a connection? Had that spear turned up in their world somehow, and was effective even against an archangel? Could it even be Kaia herself, resurrected and transformed somehow by the dark power of that world and come back to help them?</p><p>Whatever, it sounded as though his people were rounding up every weapon they could find that might have an effect on Michael, and entering the final phase of an all-out assault. They didn’t have much time: according to Garth’s intel, Michael was planning to turn the entire population of Kansas City into monsters - on Christmas Day, of all the twisted ways to make a point. Apparently that would be soon; which meant Dean had been out of action for months. Michael must have been keeping him under for the majority of that time, because as bad as the solitude had been, if he’d been lying here awake for all of it he would have gone stark raving mad.</p><p>His family had not been idle while he lay here, a prisoner in his own flesh. Dean’s heart quickened almost painfully as his hopes soared and he felt a fierce rush of pride and love for his would-be rescuers. Together, they just might pull this off; no wonder Cas was being so circumspect about sending him these secret signals. He had found a way to let Dean know what was coming, to give him the last surge of strength he needed to resist Michael to the last.</p><p>Then they all set off on their missions and Dean frowned, confusion dimming his elation. The chatter he overheard was between Sam and Jack - but Cas had gone with the others, hadn’t he, to get the spear? He didn’t hear Cas’s voice, or any mention of him by the two. What was going on? Was the angel radio from Jack, then, and not his long-time friend..? Well, Jack was a nephilim, and the son of Lucifer. They had seen examples of his power, it stood to reason he might have managed this; actually made more sense, in a way, than Cas, who (besides that one time in Heaven) had never done anything similar before. And if it was accidental, unconscious, that would explain why nobody had tried talking to Dean directly. That was fine; meant he had a backseat pass to whatever his brother was getting into right now.</p><p>He listened, silently cheering them on, as they broke into the mail depot and located Ketch’s package. Jack had taught himself how to pick locks and Dean was feeling prouder by the moment. He had taken a chance on the kid, because he was just a kid, though Jack’s latent power made him uneasy; but he had to admit he was stepping right up to the plate, fitting in just like a Winchester. He’d tell him so when he got back, looking forward to that shy but heartfelt smile he gave whenever one of them told him he’d done good. They didn’t praise him nearly enough; or Dean didn’t, he realised a little guiltily. He’d been so worried about the kid’s bloodline, never giving him enough of a chance to prove himself, but as Sam and Cas kept saying, Jack was his mother’s son too. He had stepped up at the last to take on Lucifer, after all, and nearly died for it; it was time for Dean to start giving credit where it was due.</p><p>Just as Dean was congratulating himself on his renewed affection for the youngest member of their family, the TV screen flickered into life, and suddenly he could see them both as clearly as if they were on Candid Camera. The viewpoint was from somewhere behind, as they walked out of the building, his brother clutching a parcel covered in Express mailing labels. </p><p>“Happy Holidays,” Jack remarked cheerfully, pointing to the box. But… if Dean could see Jack… then what was the source of - and reason for - this new visual perspective..?</p><p>His stomach swooped with the sixth sense that something was very wrong here, but he had no time to wonder further, as a man leapt into view, bludgeoning Sam over the back of the head with what looked like a baseball bat. His brother collapsed to the ground like a felled tree and Dean and Jack yelled his name at the exact same time. Then a woman joined Sam’s mystery assailant and they both overpowered Jack and dragged him, struggling, into a black van parked nearby. </p><p>Sam struggled to his feet, calling after Jack in vain as the van took off with screeching tires, and the image dipped and changed as the camera lowered briefly to the package which had fallen with him. A broad, calloused hand came into view as it picked up the parcel; a terribly familiar hand with a white shirt cuff and the edge of a grey jacket…</p><p>“I wouldn’t bother,” growled a new voice, also disturbingly familiar. “He’s long gone; and so is your element of surprise.”</p><p>Sam whipped around and his face registered shock, anger and grief in equal measure.</p><p>“Hello, Sam,” said the voice, and the edges of the screen flared with blue light.</p><p>The whole scene was tinted briefly with a colour that made Dean’s muscles clench with remembered dread. Sam’s features schooled themselves into a mask of resignation and Dean’s veins seemed to run with ice water as his brother uttered a single word, filled with weary loathing:</p><p>“Michael.”</p><p>Dean felt dizzy, the room seeming to tilt as his mind reeled, adjusting to this new perspective. Suddenly, sickeningly, it all made sense. The image he was watching wasn’t from a camera; he was seeing everything directly through his own eyes. Michael was here, <i>Dean</i> was here, trapped as a useless spectator in his own body while the archangel used him to confront Sam. And it stood to reason that Michael would want Dean to see this, his final showdown with the remaining brother. But if he was using the same TV screen to show Dean what was happening, then did that mean..? </p><p>Of course. Everything Dean had heard, all their plans, their secret plotting; Michael had been listening somehow, the whole time. It had been him all along, not Cas, not Jack, who had let Dean in on his neat little trap, as he followed them to where he could get to Sam: out in the open, unarmed and off his guard, practically alone. Now completely alone, with Michael’s henchmen - monsters - having taken Jack, and why hadn’t he fought back..? </p><p>Dean’s mind flashed helpfully to the kid’s stand-off against Lucifer, when - angry that his own son would take the side of humans - he had slashed Jack’s neck and consumed his grace, the source of his power, taking all he’d ever wanted from the boy. Poor kid must still be weak from the attack, almost fully human, the way Cas had been after Metatron had stolen his grace.</p><p>All this flashed through Dean’s mind in seconds, then Michael was talking again. </p><p>“Happy holidays,” he chuckled as he held up the golden, egg shaped device, now free of its packaging.</p><p>Sam breathed in sharply, but all he said was, “How’d you find us?” in a voice that struggled to sound nonchalant; but Dean knew his brother and could hear the despair and defeat below the surface. His heart ached for Sam and he was terrified, sick with apprehension of what Michael would do to him.</p><p>Michael didn’t answer the question, instead saying smoothly, “Dean says hi, by the way. He’s not very happy with this turn of events.” He made a series of tsk-ing sounds, then chuckled again. “Dean, such language, in front of your little brother..! Oh but it’s all right, he can’t hear you. And I forgive you, under the circumstances.”</p><p>Dean realised that he was yelling, screaming at the screen for Michael to leave Sam alone, to go to Hell; all kinds of anatomically improbable things he could do to himself which - he thought with sudden, horrified insight - he might well try out later on Dean, just like he had with the cock ring; and he closed his jaws with a ringing snap that made his teeth ache.</p><p>“What about you Sam?” Michael was saying now. “What are you going to do, hmm?”</p><p>Dean watched through Michael’s - his own - eyes, as Sam drew an angel blade from inside his jacket.</p><p>“You’re gonna kill me anyways,” he said with a shrug and a small smile that skewered Dean’s heart.</p><p>“That’s the idea,” Michael replied, and with nothing more than a flick of his wrist he hurled Sam into the side of a nearby box truck as though he was a piece of paper blown by the wind. The silver blade went skidding away, clattering out of reach. He stepped closer, holding the egg aloft, as Sam groaned and coughed.</p><p>“Did you really think your pathetic rescue attempt would come to anything?” he asked, his - Dean’s - voice cold and sneering. “All you have achieved here is to let Dean watch as you die.”</p><p>“NO!” Dean roared at the screen, jerking his manacles as he pulled forwards, straining to reach his brother.</p><p>“Perhaps some good will come of it though, after all,” Michael continued, cruelly. “Dean has been proving… obstinate in the face of my endeavours to tame him, but perhaps this will teach him a lesson. If he no longer has any reason to fight, to keep hoping, then maybe he will stop struggling and submit like a good little pet.”</p><p>“No,” Sam responded weakly, then “no, no, no, no, no!” moaning in despair as Michael’s eyes - and the screen - flared blue again. The golden egg began to glow fiercely - and to melt, crumbling like chocolate under a blow torch in his hand.</p><p>He brushed his hands together, shedding globules of metal like water droplets, and stepped forward, reaching down to grasp Sam by the lapels of his jacket and hauling him to his feet.</p><p>“What do you think, Dean?” he purred, pushing his face right into Sam’s, so that Dean had a far closer view than he’d ever wanted of his brother’s fear and desperation; the dawning hopelessness in his multicolored eyes. “Do you want this to be the last sight you’ll ever have of your brother, as I drain the life from his helpless body?” </p><p>Michael raised one hand to Sam’s throat and started squeezing. Sam’s face grew red as he wheezed and spluttered, writhing in the archangel’s - his own brother’s - iron grasp.</p><p>“Or are you going to behave yourself now, and do as you’re told? Your pathetic band of misfits are no threat to me, I don’t care whether they live or die; all I want is your cooperation. What do you say, Dean? The choice is yours, but you had better decide quickly. Time is running out for Sammy, here.”</p><p>Dean stared into the purpling, gasping face of his brother, his Sam, the foundation stone of his entire life. Life without his brother meant nothing to Dean, and clearly Michael knew it. They had lost anyway; they might still get the spear, but the egg had been their greatest hope, the one thing that could wrench Michael out of Dean so that they wouldn’t have to hurt him, too. He didn’t see any way this could go well from here; but if there was even a chance he might save Sammy, here and now…</p><p>“I’ll do it, damn you,” he shouted at the screen, tears streaming down his face. “You’ve won, you bastard, just don’t hurt my brother. I submit, okay? I know what you want, and you can have it, have me; just let Sam go and you can have it all. My soul for his; that’s the deal you’re after, right? As long as he’s alive, I’ll give you what you want, but so help me, if you kill him, I will NEVER…”</p><p>Michael stepped back, dragging Sam with him, his eyes fluttering now as he fought for breath, then hurled him against the side of the truck with a crash that dented the metal panel. Sam crumpled to the ground, unconscious - or dead..?</p><p>“He’ll live,” Michael snorted aloud, for Dean’s benefit. “As long as you meant what you said. Hold up your end of the bargain, and I’ll hold mine. I have no interest in Sam; I am the last of the archangels, and you are my chosen vessel. You made the right choice, Dean; now your brother will live to see me conquer this world, and if you please me, your servitude needn’t be unpleasant.”</p><p>Michael turned away and there was the faint thunder of beating wings; the image changed abruptly as he teleported from the mail depot parking lot to what looked like some swanky business executive’s office. Then the TV screen went black, and disappeared altogether.</p><p>
  
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
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</p><p>So it had come to this: he had given in at last, just as Michael had predicted. But not because of everything he had done to him; Dean felt a fierce flash of pride at that. No, he had given in, as he always did, to save his brother. It was kind of a running theme with him, and he was surprised it hadn’t occurred to Michael earlier - but then he’d been so set on breaking Dean with sex and tentacles. Would he be disappointed that the instrument of Dean’s undoing had been Sam rather than his own efforts? Or just pleased to finally get his hands on what he wanted? </p><p>It didn’t matter, Dean decided; the only thing that mattered was for Michael to keep his promise. Although how would he know? he thought bitterly, caged up in here with Michael the only link between him and the outside world… He would just have to trust him, and do his best to keep him sweet, stay in his good… graces. He grimaced at the unfortunate allusion. </p><p>That meant Dean would have to hold up his end of the bargain, too. He had said ‘yes’, yes to everything, whatever Michael wanted to do to him… unrestricted access, without struggling. He would have to welcome him with his legs spread like a two-bit whore’s. He could feel the heat as his cheeks flamed with shame, but also… desire, and his cock twitched, sealing his utter humiliation.</p><p>Dean realised that he wasn’t nearly as disgusted by the idea as he ought to be. In fact quite the opposite. Now that he could finally stop struggling - had a reason to, that didn’t shame him for a coward and a quitter - he felt a sense of relief that was like a great weight being lifted. He could feel his muscles relaxing and his body sinking down into the bed, even as his spirit - his psyche - soared, unfettered and rejoicing to be giving up the burden of fighting at long last.</p><p>There was nothing else he could do; but he would give Michael what he wanted, and protect his brother at the same time, and maybe it wouldn’t even be that uncomfortable. Michael had kept insisting that he wanted Dean to enjoy it, that he wanted to learn about sex; and Dean was happy to give him that, the sex itself wasn’t actually half bad. He was still apprehensive about the soul-rape, but perhaps now that he wasn’t struggling, Michael would go a little easier on him..? He knew that was a pie-in-the-sky hope even as it wriggled from his brain with puppy dog eyes, but if he just accepted it, lay back and relaxed and let it happen… would it be so very bad? </p><p>After all, Michael had proved he couldn’t do anything <i>to</i> Dean’s soul, he couldn’t break it or penetrate it or snuff out its light. All he could do was surround it, embrace it with those lingering tendrils. Sure, that was exhausting - it overrode all Dean’s senses, his ability to think, even his identity - but it didn’t actually hurt (or not much), and however it felt at the time, it didn’t go on forever. He’d wake up again, like he’d always done before, and it was going to happen anyway - his struggles did nothing to stop it - so why make it worse? </p><p>He could even deal with the tentacles - he had a predisposition for them, after all - as long as Michael didn’t turn them into snakes again, but he’d only done that when Dean pissed him off. If he didn’t fight it, that feeling - of being filled, of being stretched and transformed from within by Michael’s light - might even be kind of… well, he could probably get used to it. </p><p>And if he showed willing, Michael might even let him out of the manacles (probably not the cock ring, but… he could live with that, too) and it wasn’t as though he would need Dean to do anything much against his principles. He wouldn’t have to hurt anyone, betray his friends. Just lie back, and let Michael in… let himself enjoy what he had to offer. </p><p>It wasn’t even a betrayal of himself, because he was doing it for Sam, and when had any monster given him such an easy ultimatum? Michael had made it quite clear: he didn’t want to hurt Dean, he wouldn’t hurt him. He wanted him to enjoy it. And while he kept Michael busy and interested in here, less focussed on what Sam and the others were doing, they could get on with staging Plan B - if not to rescue him, at least to take him out, and the archangel with him, to rescue the world. He could live with that sacrifice. Sammy would be upset, of course, but upset was better than dead. Overall… overall, it might be better than Hell, after all. No pain, just the serenity of absolute surrender…</p><p>Michael came to him before too long (of course he did! ready to receive his prize) and Dean was waiting for him, pliant and eager, his cock at half-mast and nerves pleasurably tingling with anticipation. He had convinced himself into a state of complete acceptance of his fate.</p><p>The archangel stood in the doorway for some moments, looking over at the bed and savouring the sight (or so it seemed). He leaned against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets, one eyebrow raised a little cynically, his lips tilted in a small, self-satisfied smile.</p><p>Eventually he sauntered over to the bed and stood looking down at Dean, pursing his lips thoughtfully as his eyes travelled up and down his body, drinking him in. The regard made Dean’s cock pulse and stand up even straighter, as though eager to prove what a good little soldier it now was.</p><p>Dean looked back, ready to drop his gaze if Michael demanded it, but hopeful he wouldn’t have to be quite so subservient. He noticed that Michael was dressed more casually than before; he had lost the cap and jacket, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up above his elbows. He was still wearing a vest, and Dean wondered if it hid suspenders, which the whole style of his outfit suggested. He found himself absurdly eager to see them, for Michael to take off the vest and come to Dean in just his shirt and pants; as a demonstration that he could now dispense with formality and be - tender - with his charge?</p><p>“You look different, little mouse,” Michael said at last, softly. “Are you ready to keep your promise?”</p><p>Dean nodded, and swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. His cock twitched again. Each surge of interest contained and built upon by the encircling ring; Michael’s ring.</p><p>“Gentle..?” he whispered, the only intelligible word he could force out through the magnitude of his emotions. <i>‘Please be gentle with me’,</i> he was thinking. <i>‘Make it good this time.’</i></p><p>Michael’s head tilted slightly and his gaze intensified, regarding Dean curiously as though not sure any more what he was dealing with. “What’s that, pet?” he asked, as softly as before.</p><p>Dean coughed, licked his lips, and tried again. “Will you… You said I had a choice, before; gentle or rough. You said. Can I… I want to choose gentle?” His voice lifted, turning it into a query, hesitant. Hopeful.</p><p>Michael took one hand out of his pocket and trailed his fingers along Dean’s chest, over his stomach, up his cock, which was starting to strain from the attention. Then he circled his thumb and forefinger just above the ring and squeezed them together, gently.</p><p>Dean stifled a moan as Michael said, levelly, “I would think, if you are giving yourself to me as fully as you claim, you should not be concerned with such self-serving distinctions.” </p><p>He shifted his hand slightly and tapped his nail against the side of the ring with a light, metallic clink; the reverberation shuddered deliciously through Dean’s cock and he gasped, even as his hopes plummeted, constricting his chest. Michael wasn’t going to let him choose, wasn’t going to let him off lightly. He supposed he deserved it, for all the trouble he’d caused; he would be punished, for now, but afterwards perhaps..?</p><p>“I think it is up to me, your master, to choose how you will be treated,” Michael continued, his voice a predatory purr. “Don’t you think so, Dean?”</p><p>Dean nodded again and dropped his eyes from that piercing blue stare. “Y-yes, of course,” he stammered. “I’ll do whatever you - however you want.” He was his for the taking. He felt, inexplicably, even more naked and vulnerable than he already was, laid out like an offering; like a lamb shorn of its fleece and awaiting its fate, either the petting hand of kindness or the blade of the sacrificial knife. Like the mouse Michael called him, held pinned between the paws of a cat. He knew he would be played with, the only question was how much it was going to hurt.</p><p>“Hmmm,” Michael rumbled, and his fingers returned to brushing Dean’s penis, sending new waves of arousal coiling through his body so that he panted, quietly. “That’s my good boy. My good little pet. I told you you would give yourself to me, eventually. Even if your stubbornness forced me to think outside the box, find alternative methods of… persuasion. You would do anything for your brother, wouldn’t you, Dean?”</p><p>Dean gulped, nodded, kept his eyes on the buttons of Michael’s grey serge vest. He wasn’t sure what was wanted of him right now, felt he was walking the knife edge between pleasing or enraging his - master. Could imagine Michael getting angry, saying that he wasn’t his after all, that he was doing this all for Sam and so it wasn’t the unconditional surrender he required. To deflect the issue, Dean dared to ask a question instead.</p><p>“How did you do it?” he asked humbly. “I mean - I get that it was Jack, I think. You were listening through him, right? But, how?”</p><p>He held onto the hope that it wasn’t Jack’s fault, that he hadn’t been complicit in the deception, with the last, fierce shreds of his determination. For Sam’s sake, it had to have been a trick.</p><p>Michael paused for several seconds, as though considering whether or not to answer, and his fingers stilled, resting on the tip of Dean’s cock so that he could barely think straight, his chest heaving with silent breaths. Finally, Michael chuckled, and swiping his thumb over the slit to gather up a bead of precome with which to lubricate his fingertips, he resumed their tantalising, maddening trail up and down Dean’s sensitive flesh.</p><p>“Yes, it was Jack,” he confirmed. “I had him under my control for quite some time back on my own world, you will recall. And he is nephilim, half archangel, so very young and inexperienced. It was not hard to tune in to his feelings, his senses; he broadcasts them like a lighthouse, for any to read who can pick up such signals. At first he was warded from me, in your bunker, with its spells and sigils; but his concern for you was all the link I needed. He thought about you, and I found my way in.”</p><p>So it wasn’t really Jack’s fault, Dean thought with a surge of relief that loosened his chest. That was something; at least it meant that, while Michael might be able to spy on them through Jack, he wasn’t an active traitor, working to put Sam in even greater danger. It didn’t bode well for their chances of staging a rescue though, or any kind of assault.</p><p>Michael was looking pleased with himself; Dean had been watching him covertly as he talked, his attention on parts lower than Dean’s face. His trick had paid off, so maybe Michael wasn’t angry; he had what he wanted, maybe now he had no reason to attack Dean the way he had that last time. But it was uncharacteristic of him to just stand there like that, touching Dean almost absently, like petting a dog - okay, very inappropriate petting - but not showing much of an interest in Dean’s straining erection, which was becoming uncomfortable to the point of pain. He had Dean now, all of him, to play with and explore all he wanted without resistance; what was holding him back?</p><p>“So, uh… what are we gonna do now?” Dean blurted, needing to <i>know;</i> he was on board, whatever it was, he could just do with a little heads-up so he could steady himself to ride it out, if Michael did intend to be rough with him. The suspense was beginning to be worse than anything, and the cock-ring felt like pincers around his iron-hard shaft.</p><p>“Do?” Michael cocked his head again and looked up from Dean’s dick, into his face, but his expression was elsewhere, abstracted. He hummed thoughtfully. “I don’t think I’m going to do anything; you can relax, little mouse, I have no need of your services for the moment.”</p><p>Dean stared at him, mouth agape, his mind whirling. Not <i>do</i> anything? After all this; after everything he had endured, after he had given himself up like freaking Sansa Stark, <i>now</i> Michael wasn’t interested..?</p><p>He knew he should be relieved; apparently Michael expected as much; but all he could feel was a strange, twisting, swooping sensation - as the rising hurt and indignation warred with the sudden plunge of his guts, the sinking dread of abandonment and worthlessness. Michael had him at last, he’d given himself to him, gift wrapped and all; and now he was throwing him aside like so much trash.</p><p>“I don’t… I don’t understand,” he managed to grate out, staring up at Michael pleadingly. “I thought… thought you wanted…” He couldn’t make himself finish the sentence. <i>‘Do I mean anything to you?’</i> He wondered in silent anguish.</p><p>Michael sighed, his head still on one side, and drew back his hand from Dean’s groin, shoving it casually back into the pocket of his trousers. </p><p>“I have what I wanted, don’t I, Dean?” he said, and there was the barest hint of a warning, the cold flash of steel, in his tone. “I wanted you - all of you - and now you have given yourself to me, and you are mine to do with as I please; when I please. I am quite satisfied; don’t be concerned about that. You shall stay here, where I can admire you, and be content for whatever rest I let you have.”</p><p>Realisation hit Dean like a sucker punch, leaving him dizzy and sick. Michael had what he wanted; he wasn’t going to demand sex, or engage in intriguing experiments, or even subdue Dean in one of his overwhelming conquests of grace. He wasn’t going to do anything to him at all; ever again. He had no need. What he’d said about wanting to understand the puzzle of human sensuality was probably a lie; or even if it had been true at the time, he had learned enough now to satisfy him. He didn’t want anything else; Dean couldn’t give him anything else. He was going to go away, for good this time, and leave Dean here all alone without sensation, without stimulus… worse than grace rape, worse than torture, far worse.</p><p>“Please!” he cried out, rattling his manacles. “I know you think I - that I don’t have anything left to offer, but just - listen, I did what I thought you wanted, and I still will; I’ll do anything! Just tell me what you want, or don’t tell me; take it anyway, I’m yours, you can…” He knew he was babbling and caught his breath; tears started to his eyes and he blinked them angrily away. </p><p>“Oh, Dean,” Michael said, his tone full of gentle disappointment. “You really do mean that, don’t you? Such a good little mouse. But I find that you were right all along; it was the fight that I was enjoying, and now there is no fight left in you… Well.” He shrugged, and his mouth twisted. “I’ll still enjoy you, locked away in here, your pretty soul on display; but I have no further need for you, it seems. Unless, of course, you are willing to continue the struggle..?”</p><p>Dean stared, his heart hammering. “And… if I do?” he asked, his voice raw and aching. “If that’s what you want, will you punish me for it; will you go after Sam?”</p><p>Michael waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “I have no interest in Sam; or the rest of your little band of sorry rebels. If they come against me, I will fight them, but I have much more pressing business than hunting them down if they wish to stay and skulk in the shadows. If you want to play at being my lionheart again, I won’t chastise you for it; I would relish the contest.”</p><p>“But…” Dean’s jaw worked and he swallowed painfully. His throat felt like sandpaper. “If I struggle, I - you said you wanted me to enjoy it, but I don’t! I can’t, not if…”</p><p>Michael stared down at him, compassionless as a marble statue. He shrugged again, his meaning clear: not my problem.</p><p>“What is it to be, Dean?” he prompted gently, when Dean’s mind raced like a rat caught in a maze, seeking an impossible solution. “Will you lie here quietly in your cage, my pretty little mouse; or will you recall your lion spirit and roar at me again? It is all one to me; I will enjoy you either way. I said I would give you a choice.”</p><p>Some choice, Dean thought, bitterly. Gentle or rough, he’d said; but ‘gentle’ on his terms seemed to mean no interaction at all. Could Dean summon up the courage to fight him again, to be the lion he wanted, and suffer through the torment of conquest, just to have something - anything - to do?</p><p>He shook his head weakly; he had given himself up already, and with that act of submission, all the fight had gone out of him. He wanted nothing more now than to show Michael that he could be good for him, that even broken, he was still worth something; but Michael wasn’t interested in him that way, when he was weak, and a slave. Dean had given him everything; and now he was unable to take any of it back. He would be left here, like a trophy on a shelf, gathering dust while Michael laid waste to the world, and his mind wandered into madness. The tears began to pour down his cheeks, unheeded.</p><p>“Ah well,” Michael said, as though it were no great thing. “You’ll let me know, if you find your voice again.”</p><p>He smiled; terrible in its complete lack of emotion; and turned away.</p><p>Crossed the tiny room, opened and closed the door; and was gone.</p><p>Dean’s groin ached with a throbbing pulse that tied directly to his heartbeat, and to his shattered, deadened brain. He knew it would subside eventually; everything would. He would lose all feeling, all conscious thought, as his mind unravelled and spun out into the void.</p><p>All he had to do was summon his courage, and fight.</p><p>He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall with a tiny whimper.</p><p>He would be good. Maybe Michael would come to him, occasionally; when he grew bored.</p><p>All he had to do was wait.</p><p>
  
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>All my love, thanks and admiration to <a href="https://blindswandive.livejournal.com/92260.html">Blind Swandive</a> for being so awesome to work with, not just for the incredible and painstaking art but an extremely thorough and helpful beta! The collaboration I dreamed of! Please, please drop by her LJ to give a like for the gorgeous illustrations. She has worked so hard and surpassed all expectations, her art is sublime. 🥰</p><p>An effusion of thanks also go to:<br/>Monicawoe for the Enochian! You didn't just help out the artist, you have helped solidify PLOT for the sequel!<br/>The Eldritch Bang mods for their excellent management of the challenge and Discord chat (and wrangling excitable writers).<br/>My fellow authors on Discord who jumped to help me so kindly when I interrupted their conversation in a panic, after stumbling into a nasty plot hole that threatened to derail the entire story. You guys saved the day!<br/>And to Alltheshrinks for being my #1 cheerleader and immoral support, patiently waiting for this to come to fruition over a year or more. I hope it is worth the wait! 😘</p></blockquote></div></div>
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